B2B Marketers on the Move: Celebrating B2B Industry Rising Leadership

Balance advocating for your career aspirations and staying open to unexpected opportunities. Many of my best job experiences happened organically — and weren’t things I would have sought out myself. When you release yourself from a specific ‘career path,’ you invite the unknown to be full of positive possibilities.”

I’ve found that finding a balance between having a sense of urgency and patience is paramount for career growth. A sense of urgency is critical to excel in your day to day that is in service to your team, your partners, your clients, etc. Patience is about gaining perspective, leveraging experience and relationships to compound your value and planting seeds in areas where you want to grow.”

B2B marketing notoriously gets a bad rap for being ‘boring’. It’s only boring if you allow it to be! Don’t be afraid to get creative and lean into the unknown. Whether you’re in a small B2B niche or large enterprise, you’ll walk out with advanced critical thinking skills, the ability to ask and answer ‘why’ like nobody’s business, and master the craft of tailoring your marketing message to a working team all the way to the c-suites.”

Expectations are everything. Make them as clear as possible with everyone — vendors, bosses, employees, executives. It’s frequently the difference between viewing a person or initiative as a failure vs a top performer. Don’t let success hinge on unspoken assumptions.”

Never stop learning. With GenAI and other technologies, it’s important to stay on top of the trends, learn from the professionals, and know what technology to use and how to best use it. Also, always be kind.”

It can often feel like we’re all being asked to build, ship, publish, or launch the next great program, experience or campaign to attract more demand. But before you dive into worrying about creating and capturing demand, take a look at if you’re even converting the existing demand you have. One of the first things I see having a huge impact in the first 30-60 days is a deep dive into the marketing to sales hand-off and finding all of the little pain points, opportunities, and technical snags that might make your conversion even just 1% better. Go a step further and talk to your customers, sit in on some sales calls, dissect everything you can down-funnel. And THEN you can go build your brilliant demand campaigns.”

Thought leadership can be very effective in the marketing and sales process – even more so than traditional advertising or product-oriented marketing. And, 50% of c-suite executives say that high-quality thought leadership has more impact during economic downturns than when times are good.”

B2B marketing is moving faster than ever, and there’s more access to the basics that used to be so time consuming. Now the winners will be separated by the ability of marketing teams to tell the story of true product impact.”

The AI powered future marketers have been waiting for finally came this year. Your customer expectations are higher than ever and, thankfully, AI has arrived just in time to help.”

Know when to say ‘yes.’ While saying ‘no’ has incredible value, I’ve found in my career that saying ‘yes’ has led to more opportunities and advancement. By saying ‘yes,’ I’ve shown my willingness to help others, embrace change, and learn new skills.”

Word-of-mouth marketing continues to be one of the oldest and best channels for trust-building and influence. But activating tribes of employees, customers, or ‘micro-influencers’ to drive awareness about your company can be a challenge.”

My favorite part about onboarding at a new company? Discovering internal subject matter experts who say ‘Yes!’ with enthusiasm when marketing asks them to record a quick feature tour video.”

B2B marketers have evolved from generalists to highly specialized groups focused on distinct objectives. But how does this affect the customer experience? Demand, ABM and customer marketing teams using a lifecycle revenue marketing (LRM) approach can achieve growth and deliver connected experiences.”

‘What do you have no control over that gets in the way of doing your job better?’ This is something almost no company asks a marketer, but it would be such a productive conversation. B2B marketers at larger companies have limits: limited insights on what happens when things get passed to sales limited understanding of the revenue they generate limited ability to influence or affect things like the site they drive traffic to ….the list goes on. Those limits aren’t excuses. In fact, most marketers are dying for the c-suite to understand these limitations so they can be addressed interdepartmentally as a team. Too often, the left hand isn’t talking to the right.”

Time flies when you’re having fun. I started in January 2020, right before the pandemic. It was a challenging time in the world, but belonging to a place like Google gave me a real sense of community. Cheers to finding joy in your work.”

With so much attention on the topic of inclusion and diversity it can be easy to think that the battle has been won, but there is still much work to do. If we want to ensure that I&D stays a board level initiative and that board level initiatives turn into positive actions and outcomes we have to be persistent and we have to continue to drive awareness and visibility in all that we do.”

The reality is that your goal as a marketer is to be the world’s best marketer for your company. And to do that means you’re going to have to create a lot of bespoke solutions.”

Remember it’s OK to take a break from work. Your career will actually thank you for it in the long run.”

My encouragement goes out to everyone, regardless of your title, role, industry, or experience. Be the kind of person others would want to support and don’t hold back from getting behind peers you respect and trust. It’s needed far more than we realize. And it’s something money can’t buy.”

At the end of the day as marketers what we do is important for the businesses that we serve, but at the same time, I firmly believe that we can teach anyone how to be a marketer.”

ChatGPT and generative AI present opportunities for role adaptation, not job extinction. Embracing these technologies demands the right mindset for individuals, teams, and organizations.”

People don’t want to be ‘sold’ they want to be educated, have problems solved, feel like they matter, feel creative and empowered, and to be entertained, surprised, and delighted.”

Find something you’re good at, that people will pay you for, and become great at it.”

At this very moment, a new class of AI-powered tools is being developed to stay ahead of the curve by fostering a culture of adaptability and predictive planning. With the help of these tools embracing innovation and keeping a pulse on evolving technologies will empower our teams to excel and drive us toward operational excellence. A new area of adaptive operations management is upon us. Companies that won’t embrace it will lose out.”

Deep sales is about putting in the work and the research to understand your prospects, long before outreach begins.”

People can be more authentic if they have an environment of trust and stability. They need to feel confident that if they show their flaws, they will still have their job. Relationships require give and take and it can be professional and contractual or based on trust and commitment. Building a strong company culture and fostering genuine relationships within teams are vital to the success of any organization.”

Want ROI during a recession? Keep your marketing team around and your media on. If you don’t your competitors will.”

Great leaders know how to leverage technology to drive innovation and growth. With the rise of #RemoteWork, technology has become even more crucial in enabling collaboration and communication across distances. As a leader, it’s your job to create a culture of innovation and technology that enables your team to achieve their full potential, no matter where they are.”

In marketing, you can have the best playbook, the best strategy and the best technology, but none of that matters if you don’t have the right players.”

Think of any time you’ve been your best self at work – it’s always to meet a new challenge or solve an interesting problem. It’s all about stepping out of your comfort zone, in both big ways and small, and working towards a common goal, with both new and familiar people.”