How technology is shaping the relationship between B2B marketers and their agencies

Transcription

1 How technology is shaping the relationship between B2B marketers and their agencies Transcript of the presentation given at the TFM&A event 27 February 2013 Justine Arthur Head of communications and campaigns, BT Expedite Brett Willis, Head of digital, Westhill Communications 38 Charlotte Street, London W1T 2NN

2 Technology has dramatically changed the skill-set required of B2B marketers. The management of websites, campaigns, databases and analytics are now taken care of in-house, while agencies provide creative and strategic expertise. This session will look at how to get the most out of the new relationship marketing technology creates between the marketer and the agency. About BT Expedite BT Expedite is one of seven standalone businesses that benefit from the power of the BT brand, while maintaining the autonomy and entrepreneurial spirit of a separate business. BT Expedite became the retail technology specialist division within BT, following its acquisition in It provides solutions to more than 80 of Europe's leading retailers including the Aurora Fashions brands (Coast, Oasis and Warehouse), Pets at Home, Primark, Snow+Rock, Thomas Pink and WH Smith. BT Expedite s solutions cover every area of omni-channel retailing, including: merchandising, point of sale, e-commerce, sales analytics and CRM & loyalty, as well as network infrastructure, hardware, training and professional services. About Westhill Westhill is a creative agency with specialist graphic design, digital and editorial teams. Formed in 1986, we've been based in central London ever since. With design, programming and editorial staff all under one roof we can co-ordinate complex projects from start to finish. We take pride in our work, and attention to detail is key to all we do we re unique in that we don t have Account Managers, with clients able to contact the people working on a project directly. Our clients cross both B2B and B2C and include: BT, Camden Council, CPA Global, the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Perfumery Association (CTPA), Department of Health, EdComs, GL Noble Denton, Markel, Openreach and Sodexo. Why are we here? As B2B marketer of the year 2012, Justine was asked by official partner B2B Marketing to speak at the show with Westhill, her core communications agency.

3 Background: Turning Japanese Justine s career has grown organically although she has always been involved in quite entrepreneurial teams, organisations or projects. She was introduced to the world of multichannel marketing and caught the digital bug while working in Tokyo in Way back then they were already talking about point of time and point of space marketing putting the target customer at the centre of the marketing campaign based on what message is going to be relevant to an individual, at what time of day, depending on where they are and what marketing channel/medium is best to reach them. This was the springboard to subsequent roles at AKQA, a leading digital agency in the UK, before moving into B2B in a global role at BSI. This led into a start up style business unit in BT, where she was responsible for marketing online Software-as-a-Service-based business applications such as salesforce.com, NetSuite, SugarCRM, and EchoSign before she took the reins at BT Expedite in How digital has changed marketing The experience and knowledge gained working in digital marketing has shaped Justine s approach. It s taught her that, for digital activities, you have to start your planning from the bottom up, otherwise you don t really know who you re talking to. This makes pinning down the different key personas vital, so you can plan, build and deliver the optimum experience for these model customers. In order to genuinely put the customer at the centre (so you can deliver the right message at the right time via the right channel to the right person) the various supporting agencies, with all their different types of experience, knowledge and data, can no longer work in silos. With digital gaining ground over the years, it s become imperative for Advertising, Direct Marketing, PR and Digital agencies to work collaboratively towards a common business objective and deliver a truly integrated campaign. This is where the core agency team approach was born and the methodology of customer centric bottom up planning, as used by digital agencies, is the way to go. But in the early days of this evolution, digital agencies were usually the poor relation with the smallest budget, the youngest people and the least big brand experience so it was an uphill struggle to ensure they were given the big picture rather than it being left to the old boys club of the Mad Men style culture where the TV advertising agency held the key budget, brand insight and board level relationships. The ubiquitous spread of new technology has tipped the balance. Now, marketers have at their fingertips a whole host of online, real-time tools, from CRM management applications and content management systems to video channels and social media platforms. These are increasingly integrated and often driven by consumers which is, in turn, raising expectations. more than a third of the UK population will own tablets by March 2013 ipad users view 2.5 times more video than users of other devices and view for 3 times as long 4G means we'll be watching even more media on mobile devices

4 This logged-on, online world also gives marketing team more genuine insights that are useful for the sales team and is bringing the two disciplines closer together or at least should be... Content: the key driver of change In the multichannel marketing world, it became obvious that it wasn t sustainable to keep feeding content updates to an agency to update a webpage. So the Content Management System (CMS) was born helping clients to manage their websites and content themselves. Other areas have seen similar developments: Data The demand for better customer service, better knowledge about customers and the shared needs of sales and marketing, along with more remote working, has driven the need for better, more integrated data bringing CRM and marketing together in cloud-based applications. Sending out more communications, and owning the data, means clients need tools that are easy for them to use, not just to create campaigns, but to track and analyse the results as well. News Press releases are a laborious process and can take weeks to get signed off in most organisations. But in the social media world we live in there needs to be a way to enable thought leaders to comment, share views and get opinions across instantly. So things such as blogs, Twitter or LinkedIn need to be part of the plan. Video With all this information being pushed and everyone too busy to take it all in, video is coming into its own. People would rather watch a video than read a whitepaper. Platforms like YouTube give the marketer freedom to share video content without having to use a developer. Networking Before social media tools such as LinkedIn, the only ways to share knowledge, drive awareness and generate discussion around niche business topics were in developer forums, face-to-face events or the dreaded . And all of these channels are content hungry they need to be fed constantly with interesting, original, trusted material.

5 The impact of this on the agency-client relationship So now, content is king. And marketers need to find ways of getting good, immediate content in the right places at the right times. That s the biggest challenge and the biggest driver for change in the client-agency dynamic. Marketers need a content provider in their pocket at all times that they can trust to really understand the business and its aims. It s no longer just copywriting. It s a full editorial role involving content strategy planning, management, writing, monitoring and following up. But the role of the agency as content creators, developers and producers given the speed in which content needs to be delivered and kept up to date has meant something has had to give. In order to deliver a joined-up integrated marketing plan to drive brand awareness, acquire new sales and retain existing customers it s become obvious that the priority is to create a more open, collaborative approach, rather than work within the confines of a traditional client-supplier relationship. Working together BT Expedite and Westhill have been working together for nearly 10 years. In fact, Westhill came up with the name for BT s new retail technology division and has played a part in its marketing activities ever since. Over the years this has included a full gamut of editorial services, designing and producing printed and online monthly magazines, marketing campaign s, award entries, banner stands, exhibition stands, event registration sites, content management systems, event signage, agenda booklets, posters, flyers, data sheets, product sheets, brochures, web pages, white papers, blogs, content management system articles, print adverts and web banners. It s safe to say that both companies work closely together and trust one another. But the way we work has changed in the last decade. Despite its success (or maybe because of it) BT Expedite s marketing department is under constant pressure to make its budgets and resources achieve more and demonstrate ROI. Each year, budget approvals get more difficult and manpower gets lighter, while targets and expectations grow. But technological changes in the last few years have made this possible. It comes down to creative marketing in every sense and getting the right mix of in-house skills and agency expertise. So the relationship has changed. The roles are being redefined and the boundaries between agency and client are being blurred. Technology and knowledge are at the heart of this transformation and, with the right agency on your side, achieving more is possible.

6 Case study 1: Annual conference The focal point of BT Expedite s marketing activities is its annual conference. Every year for the past 10 years, this event has got bigger and bigger and 2013 is set to be the biggest yet. It has proved such a draw for customers that other BT lines of business, such as BT Global Services and BT Business are getting in on the act and bringing their retail clients along. So this year will double the number of delegates (a mix of current clients and hand-picked potential customers), and massively increase the number of presenters. It will also add an extra day to the whole event. And here s the really interesting thing: five years ago there were five people in the BT Expedite marketing team responsible for pulling together the event for 40 senior IT customer attendees this year there are three marketing people tasked with getting 200 multi-disciplined customer attendees from IT, Operations, Marketing, E-commerce, Strategy etc. five years ago the collateral for the event (including invites, online registration sites, and onthe-day materials) was designed and produced by the agency, with much of the invite, registration and confirmation processes being manually managed by Expedite this year the in-house marketing team are managing almost all aspects of the event online including the invite and registration process, which is built and managed through the website CMS and have integrated it with their CRM system. These results are being achieved with a range of the online, real-time tools, including: 1. Salesforce.com 2. Genius.com marketing 3. Retail Week Technology blog sponsorship 4. WordPress 5. CMS 6. Kaltura video platform 7. Twitter 8. LinkedIn 9. Flickr 10. Lead Forensic 11. Google Analytics 12. Westhill Mail

7 Case study 2: Retailer Therapy One of the main vehicles for contacting clients and prospects and providing a platform for BT Expedite to express views and share news has been its newsletter Retailer Therapy. Originally, this was a bi-monthly printed magazine, posted out to over 3,000 clients and prospects. This has changed over the years and it is now an online magazine. But it s not just the design, layout, print and postage costs that have been saved. The move online is part of a whole new way of generating content and driving traffic to the website. When Retailer Therapy first went digital articles were still created specifically for it (and only for it) and it was all hosted by Westhill, with s sent through the Westhill Mail System. Now the newsletter is part of Expedite s website and the content is used across a range of media (blogs, press releases, case studies, videos). So Expedite is getting a lot more mileage out of every piece of content that it creates and everything is geared up to drive people back to the website. Westhill are still heavily involved in the content creation on an ongoing basis, but have a streamlined system for the newsletter production that involves them creating the that goes out to clients and sending it out through the system but the data is integrated back into salesforce.com and the content is all hosted on the Expedite site. The stats for the most recent issue were some of the best ever, with a click-to-open rate of over 25%. But if the agency is doing less on the production side, BT Expedite is spending less with the agency and has less manpower, how do things like the annual conference and newsletter continue to get bigger and bigger, without falling over? The right tools for the job Westhill has become less of a production house and more of a strategic partner for BT Expedite. Westhill s in-house editor is crucial to this new relationship, spending time with BT Expedite s specialists to truly understand the products and services they provide. As a result, Westhill is able to step in as an extension of the Expedite team and this more consultancy-based relationship has generated real value for the client. So, rather than build a bespoke event management site each year for the annual conference, Westhill designed and built one that could be bolted onto the main Expedite website enabling them to re-skin it and manage it (via the CMS) with little or no on-going costs. Similarly, rather than designing, building and sending marketing s on behalf of Expedite, Westhill has created a series of templates that can be easily populated and sent out through an system now integrated into the company s CRM. Once again, the result is that Expedite take ownership and control of elements they would previously have had to pay for. But getting the most out of these new tools has meant learning a whole host of new skills for the marketing department. So what were very traditional B2B marketers five years ago are now becoming skilled digital marketers.

8 So Expedite has gone from having a standalone website built and managed via an agency where they hold the data, do the updates and manage the entire process, to having the site built within their own website within a CMS Expedite can update, that integrates with salesforce. From specialist expertise to general know-how Westhill is just one of several specialist agencies BT Expedite call on to support their marketing services. There are also video production, telesales, PR and event companies. But the trend is the same within all of them. The roles and relationship is changing. The agencies are adding value by advising and planning, while equipping Expedite with the know-how and technologies to take on more of the production and take more control over the whole process. These agencies also allow the team to scale up or down during busy periods, such as the annual conference... so, for example, Westhill can log-in to Expedite s CMS, LinkedIn company page, blogs and Flickr sites etc., to help get content published when it s needed. It s this management role that is vital. The agency is an extension of the core marketing team. But working this way requires a whole new level of trust, respect and transparency. That even extends to budgets and costs. To ensure that Expedite get the most bang for their buck, Westhill will analyse the annual marketing plan and advise on how best to achieve its aims without blowing the budget where it s not needed, even if this occasionally means giving up the opportunity for paid work. Challenges going forward A bi-product of having all these applications in the hands of the client is that the reporting and analytics now also falls to them creating a new challenge for client-side marketing teams. With the onus on the in-house marketing team for content management and production there are a number of other challenges. For Expedite this includes the need for: content, content, content editorial services and a journalistic approach; someone who can sniff out a story and work with the specialists to craft genuine thought leading/opinionated content when they are too busy to write it themselves more analytical and data management skills (either in-house or as seems to be the norm now... the agency helping the client with this and getting them off the starting blocks before they can bring the skills in-house) to manage, monitor and interpret all the stats and results being churned out by all these applications quality checks... it s imperative that there are processes in place to have someone who is slightly removed from all this content to sanity check it and keep the in-house marketing team on their toes

9 a way to manage the relationship with an increasingly fragmented family of agencies and suppliers... hence the evolution of the core agency approach, where one key partner becomes an extension of the client marketing team For Westhill, it s about keeping on top of technology and trends to ensure that Expedite have what they need to do the job. So in the very near future we ll see the team getting to grips with mobile engagement, responsive design and liquid s. The process of raising awareness of what s available and putting it into use will often involve trialling things on smaller projects and managing the new tools for a while before training and supporting Expedite marketing staff as they transition to full in-house management. And of course, Westhill has the specialist staff able to step in and help at any point when Expedite needs to ramp up its in-house resources. It is very much an extension of the team. So how is technology shaping the relationship between marketers and their agencies? it s becoming a more collaborative partnership based on genuine transparency and trust there are more, smaller groups involved as the need for new media/technology specialists grows the need for constant content has put the management of content production at the heart of the entire process