B2B Marketing Skills: What Actually Matters (And What Doesn’t)

Episode Number: EP027

Title: The Many Hats of a Modern B2B Performance Marketer

Script:

Maelien: Welcome back. Now ahead of this episode, me and Louis were talking and I think we were talking about something that often happens to marketers and that’s when someone asks you, so what is it that you actually do?

And I know I’m guilty of it, but I’ll often give a easy answer, something like I do marketing. Or you know, on Google when you do a search and you see the ads at the top, we create those for our clients. But if we actually wanted to give a more thorough answer and answer the question truthfully, we’d probably be there for the rest of the evening.

And I think that goes for every marketer. Marketing isn’t just one thing and it’s gotten so much more complex over time due to the amount of hats that a marketer has to wear. And that’s what we want to talk through today.

Louis HD: Yeah so I remember back to my first ever job in marketing, and I was working on an in-house team for a B2B IT component wholesaler. When I think about it probably 85% of my time was dedicated to like sales support stuff. So product spec sheets, email blasts, presentations for salespeople… and fast forwarding to now when I’m doing a hundred percent performance marketing, I really struggle to understand how all of the different skills that go into that would actually fit into the 15% of the time that was left.

Maelien: And speaking to clients, I think this is still an issue. They are stretched so thin that they just can’t do everything. And usually this is the reason that they bring an agency on board.

So to show in-house marketers some love, we wanted to do a bit of an exercise, and that was if we were to be in their shoes and we only had 15% of our time to dedicate to performance marketing, what are some of the skills that we’d focus on and why?

Louis HD: Okay so let’s start with technical, and appreciate this is a bit of a broad one but, there’s lots of different technical skills that goes into performance marketing. So you know Zapier and automation, Google Tag Manager and conversion tracking, and Google Analytics setups, channel setups you know campaign structure things like that. In my mind, and I dunno if you agree Maelie, and I’m I’m kind of killing my darlings a little bit here because I love Google Tag Manager; I love setting up conversion tracking, but I actually think that the project based stuff the kind of one and done, I don’t think that I would personally choose to allocate my time to that. Because it’s so complex and it’s such a steep learning curve that you’re better off bringing in an expert to do that. Then on the actual ad platform side of things so, you know: setting up ad accounts, learning how to structure things properly, you can get a lot of mileage from from that side of things. So I do think that taking the time to learn how the ad accounts work and all of the different settings and areas within there, I do think that that’s important to allocate time to.

Maelien: I think I agree. I almost see it as from the perspective of is it a one and done activity or is it something that you can keep coming back to and keep getting value from? So Google Tag Manager, yes, it’s complex, but often it’s done once, and it’s fixed a long time. Sometimes there are issues, but it’s not something you’re gonna come back to every day, every week to look at.

So the next one that I’d kind of put on the table is creative. You know: copywriting, images, video; you can get a lot out of creative Changes to copy, changes to images, new images, like video. All of that is stuff that really moves the needle. But I guess it depends on the person, I have a background a creative background I have a graphic design degree I’m very slow at design and I I’ve moved into marketing and into analytics because like design skills aren’t as good as they should be. I would advocate that if you have a design flare and you have a creative aptitude then there’s a huge amount of value to be had from the creative skills. But if you don’t have that creative aptitude and you’re more logical or analytical; I think it would be too much of a learning curve, It would be too much of an ask to to focus on that to get a good like amount of value in return

I definitely see where you’re coming from. I think in terms of creativity, that’s almost a moat at the moment versus AI as well. 

 if you’re creative, you stand out against that average, and so you’ve got a unique ability that’s gonna set you apart and give you out weighted returns 

Louis HD: Absolutely. And I think the next one uh is like I think it should be analytics So an analytical skillset for me this is like the flip reverse of of creative. So I would imagine that people would fall into one or two camps Like one of two camps sorry, so creative or analytical. And if you’re more creative leaning then I would put your effort into that because you can iterate on creativity Or if you’re analytical, well you can analyze data and you can improve performance through the data. 

Maelien: I definitely agree. I think for me, I have a personal preference for, for analytical. I think there is a huge strength to be had here because you can quickly identify the things that are working and the things that aren’t, and do more of the things that are working and the things that aren’t usually really plain to see in the data if you are analytical minded.

And then the next I think uh commercial like commercial skillset is probably a a good one to talk through. So knowing how a business works, knowing about the profitability, knowing about the quality of leads and things like that. Like for me that is a non-negotiable, because I think without that commercial knowledge like that’s almost a driver behind what you do. And I’m talking about a performance marketing specific context here, because there’s obviously value in other fields of marketing to focus on the storytelling and the emotional engagement where the commercial side isn’t as important. But for performance marketing the commercial side of things is is the backbone of everything.

Yeah. thing that I find really useful with the commercial side of things is without that commercial piece you’re almost looking into a fog and you don’t have a clear picture, but you’re making decisions based on that. So you might be getting tons of leads through, and to you that looks brilliant, like the volume’s great, but actually they’re not turning into business because you haven’t got a focus on the commercials.

As soon as you start tapping into that commercial aspect, it unlocks this entire new perspective on things, and you see that actually things can be done a lot differently. 

So again, another solid skill, especially if you like your numbers and you like kind of thinking strategically 

Louis HD: Yeah and I I think what you said there Maelie it basically underpins the point I was trying to make which is If you develop that commercial skillset you start to learn not to take the advertising data at face value because that’s really dangerous. Like if you’re looking at the data and you’re saying okay well you know the advertising data is telling me this, so this must be right. As soon as you put like a commercial overlay over the top, well you start to realize that the the the business level of things is the most important, and the ads level of things are just kind of like a a reflection on on what’s happening. So you start to go okay well I’ll take that as truth, I don’t a hundred percent believe this but this is useful as a guide; like it it really starts to shape how you interpret the upstream data.

Maelien: A hundred percent. I think it’s almost a bit of an antidote for busyness as well, for yourself, because you can look at what things are generating revenue, but also for the sales team, because; instead of generating a hundred leads to get one sales qualified lead that may or may not turn into a customer, you’re focusing that in on the leads that are most likely to turn into sales, most likely turn, turn into customers.

And so it actually helps with that limited time that you have, but also is quite considerate of other people as well.

 next one is storytelling. And I think this is really undervalued. Storytelling is the center of everything, the people that we listen to are the people that tell great stories or contain everyday events into something that is captivating, and that means it stands out. And in B2B advertising, that’s really what you want to do.

You want to stand out. You want people to listen to you and hear you. So the people that have a natural ability to be able to tell great stories should really double down on that because that’s gonna help you stand out and get better results.

Louis HD: Yeah Yeah definitely. And I think I think there’s a a few different angles of storytelling as well or or for me there is anyway. There’s the one that you mentioned Maelie which is you know creative storytelling it’s a very advanced skill. You’re kind of playing with subtext there,implying meaning and taking people on a journey and uh trying to elicit emotion. But I think there’s also like storytelling in communication as well. So for example you know rather than sharing a table of data, really going into that data pulling out the insights and really thinking about the person receiving that data. Like how can you build a picture of what that data is is saying, and what are you gonna do next? It’s about really thinking about the person that you are speaking to, whether in reports, in data insights, through presentations, whatever it is. And building a narrative that helps them understand the point that you’re trying to make and helps to bring them on the journey with you. If you’re getting people disagreeing with you all the time, well chances are you’re probably not positioning what you’re saying well enough. Whereas if you get people asking follow on questions, chances are you’ve struck upon something that who you’re speaking to is interested in, and you can start to build on those insights and you can actually build some great action and strategies off the back of that.

So the next one’s a little bit outta the mold of the others it’s CRO, so conversion rate optimization. Which is how you improve landing pages and user journeys to make your ads generate more leads, better quality leads, or both of them together. Is a really really really important skill, because it forces you to know more about your audience, about your customers, their challenges, their desires; and it teaches you so much a about all of that; which can then be fed back into your campaigns, your targeting, your communication, your sales process, so much different stuff. If you have the best ad set up in the world and you have a terrible landing page you’re still not gonna generate leads. So having CRO as a skill is gonna make sure that you’ve got both sides of the coin in play.

Maelien: I think in terms of CRO as well, you can get huge improvements, especially if you think about this versus maybe the incremental improvements you could get from ads. So in ads you could tweak some copy or you could make some changes and you’d get improvements.

But if you were to do those same improvements on a landing page, you could potentially get two times or more improvements in some cases, which means you’re gonna get double the leads, you’re potentially gonna get twice as many customers. And so the wins you can get from conversion rate optimization is huge.

it’s also one of those kind of core skills that feeds from a multiple different areas. And so you’ll naturally learn other areas as well. And so this can be a solid one if you almost want a broad breadth of exposure and also to get really great results from the changes that you make.

Louis HD: So that feels like a natural place to start wrapping up I think you know kind of talking through that with you Maelie, the the thing that stands out to me is that I would have things that I would naturally lean to and things that I would naturally avoid. So what I would choose to put my attention and my time into it’s gonna be a different mix to to what you might do yourself. And that’s fine. You know different different people have skill sets also different times and different phases of marketing call for different skill sets as well. So I think the the main overarching point that comes out of this is that couldn’t do it all and of focusing on a small subset of these skills and leaning into what you are strongest at and also into what’s gonna move the needle the most that’s gonna be the strongest way forward.

Maelien: Yeah, it’s kind of as you were speaking about it, I was thinking about almost the stories that I read and how if it was the hero in a story, the skills laid out there, are almost like your weapons of choice. 

 But you can’t become an expert at all of them. So figure out the ones that make the most sense for you, and then just dive deep into those because the skills that are gonna have the most impact depends on how well you’re gonna use them.

Louis HD: Yeah I can vouch for that If you try and be an expert at all of them you start to get a hairline like this.

Maelien: Thank you so much for listening, and if you found this useful, please subscribe or leave us a review. Every single one helps us out loads and we really appreciate it. And if you also have a challenge that you want to tackle, then head to webmarketeruk.com/topic let us know what that challenge is and we might tackle it in a future episode.