Emotional Engagement in B2B Growth Strategies

Emotional connections are pivotal for success in B2B marketing. As this discussion revealed, appealing to emotions can help brands transcend rational boundaries, foster trust, and resonate more deeply with target audiences. Experts in brand, neuromarketing, employee advocacy, and enterprise sales shared perspectives on leveraging emotions in B2B marketing. Their insights challenged traditional notions that B2B audiences make purely logical decisions. Instead, they emphasized how emotional engagement enhances brand perception, helps address common B2B challenges, and will shape future marketing trends.

Guests

Albert De Lisio, Marketing Automation Specialist at Nasdaq

Luke Pheasey, Head of Marketing UKI & NEMEA at Staffbase

Jemma Devenish, Social and Corporate Communication at IFS

Shazna Virmani, Senior Marketing Manager - Field Marketing at Veeva Systems

Welcome to B2B futures podcast. Um, where today's topic, takes us into the heart of B2B marketing. We will explore the role of emotion in creating connections and driving success. Um, I'm Joaquin Dominguez, and in this episode we are diving deep into how emotions can transcend traditional B2B marketing boundaries, transforming strategies and outcomes. Um. Today's conversation is structured around four key segments. First is understanding the role of emotion in B2B marketing. We will explore how emotional engagement can influence B2B relationships beyond the conventional, rational, uh approach. We will talk about challenges in B2B marketer, so you will share your experiences specific hurdles you face. Um, at this stage, then we will discuss how to overcome these challenges with the use of emotion. Um, so any anecdotes, strategies, real life applications, um, is is very welcome at this stage. And then if we have time, um, we will discuss about the future of B2B marketing. Um, so we will wrap up with a forward, forward looking conversation on on the evolving landscape of B2B marketing, focusing on storytelling, um, community engagement. So different techniques and practices that we can use related to to this topic, the use of emotion. And to begin, let's start with a quick round of introductions. Um, Gemma, would you like to start?

Hi. So my name is Jem and I look after the organic social and the employee advocacy program at IFS. Um, so the role of emotion is completely key to one enabling my colleagues to do employee advocacy well and then to obviously with the content that I'm producing and I'm encouraging to be produced.

Thank you. Jemma um. Luke.

Hi everyone. Um, I've been working in marketing across different channels for nearly 20 years. I'm currently the Head of Marketing for staff base for Northern Europe, and through our employee engagement platforms, we, you know, storytelling and and narratives is a big thing for us to get our message out and also our clients messages out to their workforces. So yeah, emotion plays a big, big driver in what we do.

Thank you. Albert.

Yeah. Thank you again. So my name is Albert. I work as marketing specialist for Nasdaq, one of the global leading financial technologies and financial services companies in the world. Uh, I specialize nowadays in something called marketing automation and which is something that highly uses emotional emotional marketing for its success. And yeah, thank you for having me here in the podcast.

Thank you, Albert and Shazna

hi, I'm Shazna and I lead marketing in the food and beverage industry at Veeva Systems. Veeva is a leading cloud based software for primarily global life sciences, but we're also branching out into food and beverage and consumer products. So I feel emotions in marketing are incredibly important because people buy from people. So I think this is going to be a really interesting, uh, discussion.

So. Traditionally, B2B marketing has been very rational, focusing on features, benefits, ROI. However, the emotional connection. Uh, we will discuss. This can significantly influence B2B relationships, reshaping our approach to marketing strategies. Albert, I would like to to start with you. You studied a master's in neuroscience, and I would love to hear how these principles can be applied to B2B marketing to influence buyer behavior.

Yeah. So yeah, you are. You're right. I have a master in neuro marketing, which is the combination of neuroscience and marketing. And basically basically it became, uh, something when neuroscience and technology started to evolve, especially around the, the, the end of the 80s, the beginning of the 90s, when it became more evident how people were making decisions before it was thought that, you know, the brain was like a black box and we didn't have access to that. Then, thanks to technology and the medical advancements, um, doctors were able to understand what was happening in our brain when a certain stimulus was was around us. And the, the applications of, of neuroscience or neuromarketing, not only to the B2B industry, but also the B2C industries, I think has been very, um, life changing for not only for marketers, but also for companies and the way they strategize their, their marketing activities. And one of the key learnings, and this is something that I tend to say all the time, is that B2B is not so different from B to C. Many times we hear, yeah, we our customers or, or or prospects are other companies. But I think of the day those companies are formed by people. So the, you know, the same needs, the same troubles, the same interactions we see in our day to day. We will see them as well, uh, with our, with our prospects or clients. So we always need to think that the end of the day, we are dealing with people. And if we make people the center of our marketing strategy, we understand, for example, what motivates them, what makes them buy, what makes them, you know, want to learn more or get in touch with your with your company? That is very important because. Also something that needs to be considered is that context is everything. Right, I can take we can have, for example, a business meeting with a client and we put them in two different environments, a very well conditioned, um, meeting room with drinks, snacks, very nice people. And we talk about the same topics, but then we do another example and we put them in a completely different environment. For example, we take them to a very loud place, a place with lots of, um, interruptions. And the results will be different. Why? Because the way or prospect's brains process that moment. You know, the emotions that were generated in their brain during those two contexts will change dramatically.

Amazing. And that's a very evident example. But do you have any other example of any marketing campaign that that has performed well or bad? Because, because the use of emotions.

So I used I basically since the Covid started and marketing became more digitalized, and that's how I got into marketing automation. And in marketing automation you deal with email marketing, content marketing, and you of course, uh, do this type of activities for B2B clients. Right. And here in digital experiences, it's it's a bit different because you're not dealing with the five senses. Basically you're dealing only with visual and maybe sound. Okay. So the the brand strategy changes here dramatically because you have to be more detail oriented. And that means that the way you present your communications, the way you present your brand, um, from a content perspective, for example, how can you make, for example, your subject lines or your content more relevant for this audience and in your neuromarketing? There have been many studies about, um, content marketing and how to make people engage more. And some of the, for example, some of the most important results I apply in my day to day and have been doing it for for many years. I have worked for five different companies so far, and the success it always comes from this knowledge I have been getting for almost ten eight years of studying neuroscience is for example, always add facts and stats to your subject lines. People engage that way more than than a generic looking subject line and the way you present your content in your email. You need to understand, for example, that the brain has limited capacity. The brain can only take so much. And it's our job as marketers to streamline how we present our content or ideas so people don't feel oversaturated. What we normally. What I normally do is I have my, for example, my highlights, you know, the content I really want to showcase. It's like the start of the email and that's at the very top. And normally from a content marketing perspective, once you have data about the topics the people interact with, you will know what's going to be your star. Um, is your star article. And then we we use dividers. So we divide the content into sections. We make it as organized as possible for the reader. So they understand and we take them. We build, in a way, a journey through that email. You have the start content, you have related content. Then you can implement some quotes. And at the end of the day, once you build all this environment, you do what you have to do in B2B marketing is put the the user in contact with sales. So you always finish with that line with that connection and that helps the conversation to keep going.

That thing reminds me something that I've heard from the consultancy industry because they are they need to communicate very complex ideas. Sometimes they are in a meeting and a partner arrives and they need to communicate that to the partner, what they are doing or what they have been working with a client for a month and they need to explain it in one minute. And they have this pyramid structure. I think it's McKinsey's approach. If you can, you need to start with one sentence. What are you doing? If you have one more minute or 10s, eventually another layer, another layer, every time, more complexity. And I think that resonates very well with what you mentioned, that with the structure that you can plan on your emails, but you mentioned something that that also I think is really interesting, which is the power of a brand. Um, because that's. Maybe another layer of complexity that you can add here and that can transmit a lot of a lot of emotions as well. Um, look, we had a conversation before this conversation before this recording about the importance of of having a brand and the emotional impact that you can transmit with your brand and how you use your branding. Not not only your communication, but in everything you do in your internal culture. Everything. Could you tell us, uh, about that, how the the emotional impact of brown power contribute to your marketing strategy? Sure.

I made lots of mistakes early in my career, I think. And those habits are very difficult to get out of even today, almost 20 years later. Um, because what I've observed is far too much. Have we already mentioned B2B marketing as as almost forgotten that we're talking to humans, and humans are emotional beings. For years we've probably, you know, talked features and benefits, but people are complex and, and often don't make completely rational decisions. I was trying to think of an example, and the best I could think of is I have got two young children. The practical thing for me to do would be to own a a car, which is practical, is like a Volvo, but I don't I own a stupidly fast Mercedes. But why? Because it doesn't make any rational decision, right? Um, so I'm almost more I was trying to reflect, and I think I'm more being emotionally drawn to that brand. And then I try and backward integrate and try and make sure it works for me as a family. So I bought a bigger, wider car with more seats, but it's still based on the brand decision first. So the brand and the brand power and motion is vital I think, in B2B as well. Um. B2B buying habits have dramatically changed over the last 10 to 12 years. Um, you know, a lot of buyers have already done the due diligence. They've already, you know, spoken to their network. You know, dark social is a real thing. They've they've already got a good feel of, of, of the brand and been influenced without them often even realizing, um, before they even reach out to a company. So it's kind of it's important for B2B marketing to operate in that dark area, create the demand in the market, get their brand out. And, and you mentioned, um, McKinsey there and made me think of the Edelman Trust Barometer. You know, companies trust in companies is really important and it links into emotion. You've got to trust that brand. You know, I my example of Mercedes I trust that it's a good brand and it's not going to let me down. So that that's I think is really important. And ultimately you also need to speak to customers. Uh, I made so many mistakes in the past where in previous roles where I just haven't engaged with customers. And how do you really understand your, your customers and what their challenges are without speaking to them? So once you connect with them, then you can really understand why they purchased your your solution. And when you unpick it, you actually feel you find out that it's kind of shared values. And and people buy from people. So, you know, I spoke to one customer and they overtly said had a great relationship with the with the account exec. You know, they they felt like they really understood me. Um, and we may in that occasion may have not been the cheapest, uh, solution available to them, but it's about really understanding your customers. And that goes also to the brand.

Definitely. Yeah. The brand needs to allow. All the the possible touches and being open to listen to your community, your customers. Yeah, yeah. Really interesting. Um, and Gemma, you you mentioned the, um, that you are doing employee advocacy, um, within ifs. So how how how do you use this, um, to foster emotional connections with your audience?

Yes. So, um, we have an employee advocacy program at IFS. And firstly, you need to kind of understand what an employee advocacy program is and how it works. So we're involving our employees to share and promote our company's brand, our values and the content that we put out. And we have to do that by, um, by standing behind our words of authenticity, a for authenticity and trust. So we obviously they're promoting our brand and our values, but what are they getting out of it? Like why would they do it. So we need to go from the ground up and make sure that we are collaborating. We are, um, being authentic in the content that we create. And I think like a great example of the way we do that is, um, we had a campaign recently, a day in the life campaign, um, which is very similar to what you may have seen on TikTok. Um, just a quick caveat of, of TikTok. I know a lot of people like I mean, it's 5050. It's like Marmite, TikTok, like half the room. Love it, half the room. They don't hate it. But they're kind of, you know, head in the sand a little bit with TikTok. But essentially TikTok has has brought the world closer together. It's transcended geographical boundaries, and it's given a huge place for lots and lots of different, diverse voices to converge. So we look to TikTok for a lot of our employee advocacy inspiration, I would say, and we look at ways that making sure that we can bring that social fun element into the B2B marketing world. So day in the life, for example, was a great, um, way of doing that. We we had several videos. We had, um, lots of different people getting involved from all different parts of the business. And the reason it worked is because it humanizes the brand. It gives a genuine, authentic glimpse at what life is like as a member of Team Purple, as someone who works for IFS and it also it really inspired other people to do it. So we got that like kind of authentic user generated content, um, and that all of those things kind of feed into the fact that on social media, when you just broadcast, when you just, you lack to when you when you don't stimulate conversation, you kind of lose a lot of people's interest. Like, and why would they get involved only to be sold to. And we want to offer so much more than that. We want to offer community. We want to, um, stimulate conversation. And all of that authentically generates leads, because when people are interested, they do dig. They dig for themselves. And then they they kind of they come through in the most unconventional way. And I think that emotion is one of the absolute easiest, but also the hardest things to nail in terms of B2B marketing, because where is the line? The line is very wiggly. And, and, and, you know, a tiny, a tiny shift can really set you off balance in terms of your strategy and your your brand. Um, so I think it's like really, really important to make sure that. We're asking people to promote us, right? We're asking our employees to trust us and to promote us externally on their own networks, using their personal brands. And if we're going to be doing that, we have to make sure that we offer we offer things back to them. So in terms of day in the life campaign, going back to that one, what we were able to do was just completely disseminate, like we had so many different people contribute to this campaign. And it was really, really brilliant because like, I got to see, you know, it sounds cliche, but I got to see what someone in Sri Lanka did with their day, and I found it really exciting. And then they got to see what somebody in the Nordic regions was up to. And we made lots of friendships as well. We made lots of like, um, geographically, uh retardent friendships because, you know, we were obviously we have teams and things like that, just like everyone else. But we had things to actually talk about because it's so tricky when you're at the beginning of that teams meeting and you're with people that you don't work with. And it's it was actually really lovely to say, oh, your dog was really sweet, or I didn't know that you could get the tram and see that view. Like, I don't know, I'm trying to pull things out at the top of my head. But it was it was really nice to have genuine things that we kind of had rooted in each other's lives, and we had a little glimpse into each other's lives. I, I personally really, really enjoyed it. And yeah, I think the more of that you can get into that you can authentically get into your marketing strategy. I think then you're nailing it. I think when you're forcing it, everyone can see it. So it's like I said, the line is, you know, where is the line?

And yeah. And what could be more authentic than that day in the life of your people. And if and if they are doing that naturally, organically, I think that's very credible. But you mentioned lead generation. Are you using lead generation in in this thought leadership day in the life process on TikTok. So we have negative we.

Have no exact call to action. But what we've found is our organic social has contributed to leads. And we find that in the way of utm's. So we might use a day in the life strategically for recruitment. We might use one strategically for a specific region, or we might use one for a kind of a trending topic that we want to drive engagement to a certain area of our website. So although it's not really, really obvious, it's just it's kind of like it's the way I kind of, um, terms it. It's click bait with powerful messaging behind like click bait with intent. Um, but yeah, that's kind of how I'd say it works. We, we've had um, we've had a few mentions, obviously. Um, can't go too much into detail, but we've had a few mentions of where we have had generate we have generated leads with purely organic social, and it's really amazing to see that because, you know, money where your mouth is and numbers count in this world. So it's really nice to put a monetary value to our organic effort.

Yeah, that sounds fascinating. And I think that's the beauty of marketing that when you can generate leads or. Revenue from from things that are totally unknown, totally innovative. I think that's at least in that fascinates me. Um, I.

Think it's I think it's amazing, like the examples you gave Jemma, it's so nice to see that in B2B marketing, that social currency that you're building up and that type of emotional connection with the people that use your technology or that are interested in it, I think is very, very unique. And it's much easier said than done. I think it's a heavy lift from people in your sales team, from your marketing team, to actually get that type of engagement and social connection from people and make that emotional connection. But I feel like that really, really is the difference between success and not being successful in a specific deal. And I refer specifically to enterprise deals. Um, these have I know we're going to talk about this later about challenges, but I really feel and it's important to know that people buy from people, whether you're buying socks from a shop or you're in an airplane, people make the difference. Like when you're served really nicely by someone on an airplane, you instantly think, oh my God, this airline is amazing, you know? But it's that air of like, it's this air steward that made that experience for you. You know, it's not necessarily the entire airline. Or when you go into a shop and someone's like, oh, can I help you? Shall I find your size? This change, my changes, my perception of that brand instantly by somebody on the shop floor, like on the field? Um, and I think the same is true for B2B marketing, that interface that you have with the people that are going to be in that decision making process is a game changer. Um, because we are people, they are people, and emotional connection is necessary. Whether you're making a high value decision or a low value decision. And I think that's important to remember. And I think when we're sometimes in the realm of B2B marketing, we kind of think, oh, no, it's a different it's a different world here. We're very corporate, we're very proper. We go through these processes that we have engineered, reinforced and added value into, but then we forget that we're still talking to people who go home, who have kids and pets and have a life. And I think, Gemma, what you're doing by seeing a day in a life with people is absolutely amazing because being able to go onto a call where you don't know anybody like today, but being able to say, oh, how's your dog doing? Or how was that like recital that you went to or something? Like it kind of instantly makes a connection and you feel like you can trust that person. And I personally believe trust is the foundation of everything you need to build trust. Uh, in the with whoever you're talking to, to progress anywhere, to the next level, to another call, to even meeting someone. Um, so I feel like building emotional connections is imperative. Whether you're selling software or you're selling socks, it's it's important. You're not going to build. You're not going to get anywhere. If that person on the other side feels like they can't trust you. And of course, trust has to be built over time. And there's many elements to trust. You know, they need to feel that they've got confidence in you. They can rely on you. What you're saying is true and you're credible. It needs to be transparency in that transaction to build trust. There's many.

Easy, right? That's not easy. That's why I think using your people is how you add credibility.

Absolutely. And I just want Gemma's example. Amazing. And I'm quite inspired. Probably won't be as, uh, as applicable to what I do, but I wish we could do something as creative as that.

There is something great to add that there and something very important to highlight, and that I feel that it has been a bit lost, especially after the pandemic. And nowadays, where it seems that the digital environments have taken over our lives is the the word of mouth. Word of mouth is one of the most important things and sometimes a bit underrated. Or people tend to forget, but at the same time, technology, you know, technology has has been around for X amount of time. I mean, if we dangerous just became a thing in the 90s, the mid 90s. But before that people would rely on the word of mouth. And word of mouth is one of the most powerful social currencies that exists since the days of, you know, the caveman days. And that's how basically humans evolve. That's how humans learn how to survive in the wildness, in the in this and in this world. And. You can have all the five star reviews you, you, you want in online and in B2B you can have all the statements, but there's something that, you know that is way more important than any of that. And it's and it's when a colleague or, you know, or someone from another company recommends you the services of a, of a brand that has way more value than anything we can imagine. And that's the reason why before you said that trust, that's what what helps you, you know, really trust a brand. You don't know a company. You don't know a sales rep you don't know. So in B2B marketing, and that's one of the biggest challenges, at least in my case, where I work in the financial industry, which is highly regulated and there are many technological technological advancements. But again, regulation, regulation, regulation. And, you know, if you are, for example, NASA has been around for more than 20 years in the market. And yes, we are one of the top trusted brands. But the brand shift that at one point. But the challenge is not to reach the the top ones is, is how can you stay there over time and consistently deliver quality and trust to your prospects and your clients?

I think that, um, really plays into what we offer from the employee advocacy program, because being consistent and being being validated and being referred is all fantastic. But on social media, if you are silent, if you're not saying anything, if you're not consistently delivering high quality, relevant content to your network, then you kind of like, how would you get that trust? So I think what the Employee of Advocacy actually program actually offers the colleagues that take part is that curation of content that is relevant to them. Um, that is high quality, that is, you know, trend setting. And I think that's the kind of I struggled to put it into words in my previous segment. But that's the exchange that we give. So we get this fantastic authentic brand promotion and they get consistent, high quality content that's on a smorgasbord for them. And they can just pick it and they can tailor it, but it's there for them. And I think, yeah, I think that is just invaluable. That exchange.

Agreed. And I just wanted to add a point to what Albert, you mentioned and around and this is what I talk about with my team. It's about humanizing our brand for our customers. Um, B2B marketing traditionally focuses on products, services, and then we focus in on our features. However, humanizing the brand by connecting with emotions really helps to create a more relatable and memorable identity for them. Because although of course, our product is unique, it's a market leader in the space that we are in. There are challenges. Um, there's other technologies that could possibly do do a job similar to what you want. However, what really makes you stand apart is that brand identity, and that's created by that emotional connection. And that emotional connection isn't always seen through your website landing page or through your product demos. It's seen through when you have a round table or you go, go and meet them, or you're at a conference and you have that interface.

That's how you talk. How everything.

Exactly. Um, and I have found that my team, when we go to a conference, some of the most successful moments that has led to a deal has been when we've been walking from the lobby to have breakfast in the morning or we we had an ice cream after one of the sessions because it was so hot. You know, it wasn't because we were like suited and booted and we watched the demo and then everyone's shooting questions and saying, okay, when can we do this RFP? It's not like that. It takes so many touchpoints, but building that emotional connection, um, is really what stands out. And I see even in the sales team, the most successful salespeople, and I know this is probably a generalization, is when they actually almost make friendships, I'm sure they're not as authentic, but like, you actually have a familiarity. Familiarity you can see between them. You know, they know things about each other. They've talked to each other, they trust each other. They're you almost become an extension of their team. You're trying to help them because from genuinely, we want to try and help them. I'm sure they can get that solution from anywhere else, but we want to go that extra mile because we are trusted. We are reliable, we're transparent. We give them everything they want to know. There's nothing to hide. Um, and we're honest. And I feel like those are all elements of being emotionally aware and building emotional connection with the people you're trying to serve.

And I don't know, what do you think, guys? But I believe in B2B marketing, we have an an advantage over B2C, which is it's way easier to have a purpose, like in B2C brands. They they have invented or created marketing and brands because the many times the products are. They don't serve a purpose as, as we do in in B2B marketing. They are satisfying a need or something, but we can really help someone and improve someone's lives, um, with our products and services. And so creating a purpose and a brand around that, I believe should be way easier. I don't know why we haven't explored this for decades, you know, and we have focused only on the on the features and the rational things. When the when the rational thing is transmitting the emotion, the value that you are. How you are changing someone's life. I think we have an advantage there. I don't know what you think.

I think if you could bottle up that feeling of when the products that we are or the software that we're sharing does actually change what's happening in that person's life. So when we have particularly, um, interesting case studies, as when we're able to say this is how we allowed our customers to provide their moment of service, and we have a whole, um, campaign over this moment of service. And it's it's essentially, um, when you've successfully enabled the customers to get the absolute maximum of what you promised in that very first. Hello, my name is Gemma, and I'm selling the software, and this is what it's going to do to change your life when you actually get them to experience that moment. That's like the invaluable thing that we just we love to try and promote and highlight as much as possible. And I think it's also what you said earlier that, you know, when you you made the best, interactions when you were just, like, walking through to different areas of the convention and things like that. And that for me is what I see as the comment section. Um, so I'm very much I don't like just a like or a heart or a clap or a light bulb, like, give me five words, like if you saw me in the street and we were in the sales cycle, you're probably not just going to high five me, you're probably going to add a little bit more context. And I think that extra bit is where you do become a familiar face and you do become a trusted, credible face.

Something here to add is um, and basically is the reason why we do what we do. Uh, our brain has something called neurotransmitters. These are the chemicals that allow, uh, neurons to connect to each other in certain situations. And then one of the most important of them, and the core, you know, the one that is being studied by the most in neuroscience is dopamine. Because basically there's this this model is that we have a logical brain and an emotional brain. Before it was sold, it was thought that people would make decisions, uh, based on rationality, when in reality everything is based on emotion. In fact, 90% of the decisions we make are emotional. And that means that, you know, it's not creating super, you know, hyped, uh, campaigns or messages is everything we have said in this in this episode is linked to dopamine. For example, when you go there and start talking about a brand, uh, you do it because it generates, um, dopamine in your brain. The fact you are sharing this relevant information with your friends, your colleagues and people in the industry, uh, the reason why you choose a provider for a solution or you get in touch with someone in sales, is it becomes exciting that you have met someone that is going to, you know, give you the tools to succeed, to succeed in your career and in your business. So that's that's the reason why they choose the brands. They choose Mercedes.

Over a Volvo, like Luke was mentioning. Yeah.

Well that's a different case because luxury brands, they sell more like a status. And you know, they, they target a part of our brain that is very high in the pyramid of, of needs, which is, you know, I want to show that I'm successful. I want to show that, yes, I can afford this, that I have done everything in my life to get to get to this point. And but yeah, in B2B marketing, sometimes we tend to sell to the logical brain and we forget about the emotional brain. And that's that's an area we should explore way more, uh, not solely based on what we have discussed so far, but also from a design perspective. What I mentioned earlier in this episode is how can you make your design? Engaging, emotional and basically make people hit the contact sales button. The more you understand dopamine, the more you understand the human brain. It will give you more tools to create better experiences and basically connect more with your prospects.

Well, I think it's very clear that understanding and leveraging emotional connections can significantly engage your Hayes, your your marketing strategies. Let's talk about now about your challenges in B2B marketing. Um. Luke, you are expanding to a new market, what kind of challenges and how this conversation using emotion brand awareness can help you here.

Yeah. Um, I've.

Worked in a couple of companies where I've been part of the scale up, so we've done really well in our home country. Uh, got great customer reference ability there, great brand awareness as naturally, organically grown. They think the company wants to move into a new territory. And you can never just copy paste when you work into a new territory. There's always big challenges. Um, there's often very different competitive dynamics that you'll have local players who have already got a great, um, market awareness in that different territory. And, um, you can't just have a playbook that you then just copy and paste, like I said. And also you can't there'll be translations, there'll be different languages and there'll be context in the different copy. So all of these kind of things have to play. Um, has to have to be considered. How I've navigated it in the past is to, is to start small. So. Maybe he starts on on one key region. So for example my my territory is northern Europe. So that will be UK, Netherlands, Nordics and others. So instead of just trying to do it all at once, it's kind of that pinball analogy. Let's strike that first pin and then move on to the next, and then move on to the next before you can get the strike. Otherwise you'll be spread too thin. So to maybe focus on one region or focus on one vertical to really make sure that you've got it locked and you've kind of getting reference ability in there. Um, a kind of a how I've tackled it in the past as well is when you move into a new territory, you have no reference abilities, very much more difficult to get the ball rolling. Um, because, you know, when you reach out and you whatever you do, it's like, well, who are these guys? Don't know them. Um, so kind of it's it's almost that word of mouth. Um, the referral aspect as well is that I've tried to align with respected organizations so or partners within that territory. So instead of me trying to go and be number one in Sweden, I'll have moved in there, found out which the, you know, the movers and shakers are in that region and work with them because they will have what I'm after. They will have the respect, they will have the trust within their community and then engage them and work with them, because then they can open the doors to you to, to. And then once you've got the ball rolling and get some reference ability, then you can almost apply your playbook. But it's a it's, it's how do you navigate the the local nuances. And I think aligning with key respected organizations and partners within those territories will support you, help you kind of achieve what you need to achieve.

Yeah. And that's related with all that we have been discussing. Right. How you how you build that structure, structural things that as Albert was mentioning, uh, everything is related here, like the trust that you build with partners and also how you write the emails, how you need to be very clear in the language that you are using in, in a new territory. So.

Yeah, I it's terrible, um, expression, but I once worked for a Dutch company and internally in the UK, you know, they used to see stuff which came out from the marketing which was generated from our Netherlands headquarters, and they used to kind of terminology, they used to time it denglish, you know, everything wasn't quite right. So when as, uh, as an example of an email, if I was receiving that, but it wasn't quite right and it didn't really make sense because it was like translated by not a native speaker, you know, it doesn't help, does it? So to have that real local presence and really, you know, trusted people within those territories really, really helps conquer that.

I think, um, one of the major challenges with the use of emotion for me personally, what I've discovered is when you use emotions, sometimes you're vulnerable. You might be vulnerable with your brand. You might be vulnerable with your employee advocates. You might be vulnerable with your colleagues asking them to potentially overshare. You also have to look at the cultures. Um, if you're talking about different regions, obviously we have vastly different cultures, and some cultures don't share as much as we do. Um, and, and when we come up with our idea in London, that's not going to work globally. So I think it's about facilitating a way that everyone can be involved and the emotion can be we can project the emotion, but we also and we can, um, make people feel a certain way or intend to make people feel a certain way. But I think when you're doing it in the real world with real people, you just have to be really careful about the the way that you're making them vulnerable and the way that you're making your brand vulnerable as well. I mean, sometimes when we come up with something quite new and exciting, it can often sound quite scary and we can get quite a lot of pushback. But, um, something I like to argue is if it's not scary, is it worth it? So it's kind of it's again, where is the line? Especially in B2B marketing, it's so different from B2C. We don't get to get away with as much as they do. We don't get to take as many risks as they do. And I'm on a I'm on a personal journey to try and make sure that we actually do and we can.

That's great. What about you, Chesna? You mentioned before that having long sales cycles is is a is a challenge in your your industry.

It's a it's a super big challenge. Like they're quite long I mean in the company that I'm in right now, it's the longest sales cycles I've ever seen. And it's and it's not something that's unusual. It's because these are like high value purchase decisions that impact all parts of the organization. So there's a lot of there's a lot of deliberation from multiple departments. Um, it's a massive investment. Yes. So they're incredibly long. So how the challenge for marketing to support sales and other stakeholders is how do you create urgency? How do we create urgency with our customers? It's it's a it's a it's a challenge that most people have. Like, we want to create urgency for everything so we can get things done and we can feel great and we have a great success story. How do you do that? Like it's it's still a work in progress and it's never it's not always I shouldn't say never. It's not always the same way for each customer, like how we create that urgency. But what we have started to see is we are we are actually selling value. So in B2B we're we're selling a service. Um, but we want to create value for that service and we want to be selling that value because. Yes. Features are there. Um, you know, you know how this works. These are experts and professionals in their field. They know exactly how to do their job. How do you actually tell them that what you're proposing is going to add more value to them and to their processes and to their teams? And this is what I think is quite a magical thing, like when you try to sell value instead of features and a product itself, then you are actually elevating your brand. You're creating emotion, you're creating reliability, you're creating that secret sauce for yourself because people can actually showcase that value. And how we do it, um, in our team is we actually support our customers as an extension of their own team. So even though we're different companies, you have like, let's say you have a senior manager who's having a really difficult time to break into the sea level to actually say, we need this investment here. They keep getting pushed back. We actually work with them to help to build their business case. Um, you know, so that's adding value to them. We're trying to take things off their plate and work with them to see where their challenges are. But we're also supporting them to okay, sea level. Yes, we need the investment, but also with their team. How do you get people once you sell, let's say, any type of enterprise software, it's only successful if people are going to use it. If people don't use it, then maybe next year they'll be like, oh, well, we don't actually need all of these, uh, user licenses. And then we're at a loss again. So how we're trying to support people within our customers, and we're trying to create value for our product via our people.

Mhm. And what happens because when you reach that level of trust that you can build a case study with your, with your prospect and you even, even you can go to a meeting with a, to a board meeting and present together. Yep. And what happens after if they decide that we need to they need to wait. They need to wait for the next budget cycle. Um, and how you maintain that balance without being too Selsey and too pushy and and respect the. What do the rest of the panel, I don't know. Do you have any ideas of how can you approach someone, that you have reached that level of trust, and what do you do after?

There's something that, of course, this is a very high level and sometimes it's hard to see it. But brands have the B2B and B2C brands have the the task to try to map their, their the journey they put their their customers through and understand what's our the, you know, the highs and lows and try to, you know, visualize different situation of like you said, what happens if they have reached this moment and this happens, how can I keep them engaged? And that is difficult because I remember one of the most successful campaigns I worked with was, uh, the a teaser campaign for a new product I was working in. My previous company was a startup. It was called minutes, and we were about to launch a a new generation of our device. So the teaser campaign was, you know, a very small silo of the new device. It was we highlighted the the key feature that I was going to be groundbreaking, and the engagement was out of this world in seven, eight years working in marketing and never saw a level of engagement like that. And of course, time was passing by. We were getting people subscribed to learn more. You know, there was all this build up, which is, is, is basically like, you know, what moves people to talk about it. You know, it's like the rumors, it's going to happen. It's not how much is it going to change? But then as a marketing team, we started wondering, wondering after or even the day we launch, how are we going to keep people interested to learn more? So it becomes a challenge because everybody has limited resources, no matter the size of the company they're working with. Because it's money, it's time. It's people. So how can we keep this ball rolling? And yeah, we did it. But you know. It's it's it's not an easy task. You need to think outside the box. And I also think that's one of the challenges we are facing now, for example, with AI, because we are building content, not only visual content but also written content using this amazing tool that, you know, helps us, um, streamline operations. But how much of that is really significant for the audience and for the people that you know, are are willing to trust us as a company. So, yeah.

I just wanted to add there, like now that we have all this AI for every single thing, images, text, content, you can write blogs for days. I feel like that's great and it helps us scale and speed up, but it also sometimes makes us lose our authenticity. And that's also clear. You can tell. I can tell when AI has written me a letter, or I get an email because it's just so prim and proper. There's no human emotion behind it. And also sometimes it doesn't even make any sense. Why did I get this email? So I feel that you can't lose that authenticity, and that authenticity is going to be your secret sauce for things, especially when AI and there's so much information and imagery out there, the only thing that's going to differentiate anyone is their authenticity. And that that's.

Why employee advocacy is so powerful. Absolutely. You can't automate, uh, maybe you you could, but I'm sure you could. Automating automating a TikTok video. You can. Maybe we will be able to create fake faces speaking. But who can I.

But they're so awful.

Yeah, but that's not the idea, but I.

I don't know. I have a personal preference for for community marketing. I believe having a community of marketers or marketers or whatever the industry you are, it's so powerful, it allows you to to to build that emotional connection and and being in an endless cycle, which is not just a newsletter to keep nurturing someone. I don't know if you, you, you came across, uh, communities. And if you use communities and use emotion in communities.

Um, I've.

Yeah, we are on a drive to improve our community here. Um, you know, we've we've got slack groups where thousands of internal communicators who are our ICP. We kind of facilitate that because, um, from what I've experienced and kind of it kind of goes back to, you know, coming out of the Covid period, everyone got bombarded with virtual events, right? So we had like this big, great reconnect, as we called it, a few a couple of years ago where we actually got back out and we hosted, we facilitated live networking. So we we invited internal communicators to meet up with other internal communicators. And what we experienced afterwards is, is from speaking to people who attended and learned from each other. Is that that that community that they were desperate for, they they wanted to to connect with their peers and learn. So we facilitate workshops where they come and talk about their challenges and almost like work together on their challenges. And then they take those back to their day jobs and implement them. You know, we've got experience. I discovered that, you know, we connected about ten people on one table, and then they'd all started their own WhatsApp group and connecting. So it's clear that people want this connection. They want to learn from their peers. They want to you know, we've all got our LinkedIn networks. That's a community, right? I've and this goes back to dark social. Why it's so important because B2B buying habits have changed. If I want and I've done it, I've got examples where I've needed a new solution. So instead of going and googling and then doing a lot of kind of feature benefit mapping, I've reached out to some trusted people in my network and said, what have you? Who have you used for this? What have you done for that? And it kind of gives me a short list of maybe a couple, and then I go and and go and investigate it. It's, it goes back to trust and about you trust your community. And from us hosting this, this slack channel where we've got a couple of thousand, uh, internal communicators who are just posting queries to each other, you can see that they share ideas and they ask, um, who are you using for this? Why? So they they trust ultimately their community. So that's so important that companies recognize this. And you can't just buy a community off the shelf, right? You can't. You've got to live and breathe it. You've got to really understand your your ICP. You've got to yeah. Post questions and really learn from them so that you can then subsequently, um, deliver what they're after.

Yeah. And I think it's a great opportunity to showcase your brand endlessly, you know, and in different approaches in the way you communicate within the slack channel, but also in the way that you organize an event and every. And.

Yeah, and kind.

Of a high level, it just shows that you actually care. You actually care about your audience, you care about the category. And it's not it's not just what's most important is that you don't utilize that just as a sales tool, but it actually is more about positioning your brand in their mind so that, you know, there's people in our communities who don't. They're not all our customers. But the process, the thought process is if you do the right behaviors over time, when they have got the requirements, you're more likely to be top of mind. So your organic, um, you know, your leads through organic or Google are going to be high if you're doing the right demand creation. Um, activities.

I think offering your community, um, something back as well. So, like, um, something we're looking at is influencer marketing. And if you're identifying, you know, a specific genre or niche that your community are interested in actually getting in influencers to come and make it special, make it shiny, make it exciting, and also share that community. I think community grows community essentially. So if you're all advocates and you're all engaged and you're all relevant and consistent and interested, you're only going to grow and it's just going to naturally grow. So I think community is absolutely invaluable. I think, um, a lot of people do use them as just a broadcasting tool. And, and then they fail. So I think as soon as you put on the, the mindset that actually this is a conversation, this is a genuine community. This is not just a channel with 500 of our employees and their friends. Yeah, I think yeah, genuine community is is great and fantastic.

Guys, I just realized we are coming to an end. I want to say thank you so much for this conversation. I really enjoyed it. I don't know if you want to say a few words. You are very welcome.

Thank you to everyone and.

All your ideas. It was it was so nice to have these insights and examples as well. Sometimes we sit in our own little box and don't always get an opportunity to hear other people's creative ideas and what they're doing. So thank you.

Yeah. Thank you everyone.

Thank you. Nice to meet you all.

Bye bye.

Bye bye. Thank you so much.