Figaro Digital: The Human Revolution of B2B Marketing

Digital dominates B2B marketing. However, the headlining topics of Figaro Digital’s Roundtable revealed a common theme: that the digital strategies behind better conversion rates rely on an increasingly human dynamic.

It’s no surprise that the digital evolution has come to dominate the world of B2B marketing. Over half of all B2B marketing spend is now dedicated to digital channels. Yet perhaps the most unexpected consequence of this shift is how it has brought B2B closer than ever to its consumer-driven counterpart.

In the most recent Figaro Digital summit 6 B2B leaders presented their unique insights into 6 very specific aspects of marketing communications and technology. However, despite the range of topics, each presentation revealed how marketers are overcoming similar dilemmas with an increasingly consumer or client–first approach.

Key topics

This revelation might not be ground-breaking, but listening to Figaro Digital’s summit of over 50 B2B specialists revealed the extent to which a more human dynamic is changing the wider B2B environment. Opening the event was Chieu Cao, Co-Founder and CMO of Perkbox, who discussed how they moved from start-up to scale-up and shared stories of successfully building an award-winning team.

One of the key advantages of seeing brief,10-minuite presentations back-to-back is the ability to detect the subtler parallels that interlink each success story. Getting your technology stack right was a clear highlight for Perkbox; especially identifying where scalable solutions add value to a growing company that needs to “pivot”. This idea recurred throughout the morning’s presentations from Curated Digital, Liberty Marketing, Freestyle Interactive, Octopus Group and our own Sandra McDill.

Other themes of the day included how B2B brands need to learn from the faster paced, customer-facing world of B2C, how B2B agencies and brands need to build deeper relationships to work more effectively together, and how B2B marketers can get their breath back using market innovations that restore the focus on customers and their conversions.

The transition from lead into paying customer

Convertr’s presentation rounded up the morning, discussing the importance of ensuring that human leads are properly verified, validated, scored and routed when they enter the funnel. This ensures that B2B brands, agencies and publishers convert the right customers, faster. Using the analogy of fishing, Sandra discussed how:

• 68% of B2B companies are still struggling with lead generation
• Only 5-10% of qualified leads convert for B2B marketers
• Up to 30% data inputs are incorrect

From basic data capture mistakes to common human errors – these all have a huge impact on brand reputation. The problems spread from frustrated customers to lethargy from exhausted sales people wasting time on unqualified leads and marketers unable to understand the ROI of their marketing spend.

As well as discussing how Convertr has helped B2B brands resolve simple yet fundamental issues in these areas, Sandra also raised the importance of GDPR. The upcoming regulation is an extra incentive for brands to reassess customer acquisition technologies now, with Convertr offering best practice advise in the form of our complimentary GDPR Whitepaper.

Again, it’s worth noting that this regulation is underpinned by human interest in personal data and privacy; ensuring both customer information and businesses are protected. With only a year to go until the new data laws are both instated and enforced, it’s a clear pressure point for the B2B industry, and one which needs urgent action to ensure businesses are fully compliant before next year.

You can watch Sandra’s 10 minute talk on how B2B brands can turn warm leads into paying customers here.