The rise of post modern B2B marketing – does your marketing team fit the challenge?

The rise of post modern B2B marketing - does your marketing team fit the challenge?

There was much discussion this week at London’s B2B Marketing Summit, on the rapid change of marketing. Some coined it the rise of post-modern marketing. For the last 10 years we have been working in the Modern Marketing era.

Post-modern marketing can be identified by the following:

Rapid change in B2B
  • The planning cycle is shorter – generating the need for greater agility
  • Rapid progression of technologies (superseding quickly)
  • Sheer volume / complexity of tools and steep learning curve
Successful marketing teams need
  • diversity of skills
  • ability to fail fast
  • a mixture of generalists and specialists
  • the ability to understand data
  • a knowledge of the role of content marketing
  • an ability to orchestrate – complex structures, processes and skills
  • to be able to set the strategy for creative
  • to have commercial acumen and business mindset

However, the most interesting and relevant topic revolved around the roles of technology and creativity.

 

Technology + creativity
  • Emotional connection at the heart of great marketing
  • Better balance needed with data and digital technology
  • Marketers need to leverage the potential of individualisation

We are all aware that business decisions are made with emotion as well as rational thinking, some even say that emotions are even more important in B2B marketing than consumer because of the perceived personal risk.

Unfortunately, I think most B2B marketers are so focused on features and benefits that they are forgetting about the power of emotion to actually get noticed in the first place.