Ops Cast
Ops Cast, by MarketingOps.com, is a podcast for Marketing Operations Pros by Marketing Ops Pros. Hosted by Michael Hartmann, Mike Rizzo & Naomi Liu
Ops Cast
Blurring the Lines: Exploring B2B and B2C Marketing Operations with Beth Horrigan
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This episode dives into the dynamic realms of B2C and B2B marketing operations, highlighting their interconnectedness and the emotional versus rational appeals that differentiate them. Beth Horrigan shares her extensive career journey, emphasizing the importance of curiosity and collaboration across marketing sectors.
• Discussion around pivotal career moments in marketing
• Exploration of B2C emotional marketing vs. B2B rational marketing
• Insights on campaign management and cross-team collaboration
• Importance of technology and AI in marketing operations
• Commonalities from the 2024 State of the MoPro report
• Advocating for curiosity and knowledge-sharing across sectors
Link to Adam Grant's podcast episode can be found here.
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Exploring B2C and B2B Marketing
Speaker 1Hello everyone , welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by MarketingOpscom , powered by all the MoPros out there . I am your host . Michael Hartman Joined today one of my co-hosts , mike Rizzo . Happy New Year-ish .
Speaker 2Happy four-year anniversary .
Speaker 1Four-year anniversary .
Speaker 2yes , we're halfway through the month of the new year of 2025 , and are 100 in on the fourth year of multiple or not most fifth year . My brain is in so many places to them .
Speaker 1We're starting year five now , right ? So ? We're starting year five yeah , and if I remember right , you get a birthday that's happening around this time yep , yep , that'll be tomorrow , tomorrow well , by the time this gets out , it'll be in the past , but that's all right .
Speaker 1That's all right , that's all right . Well , joining Mike and me today to talk about the differences between B2C and B2B marketing operations is Beth Horrigan . Beth has worked across a wide range of industries in her career , most recently with Freefly Apparel , working in the e-commerce operations group . Prior to that , she worked in e-com operations and user experience for Nespresso Nice . Before that , she was a digital technologist with Diageo , supporting several brands , and digital marketing manager with the National Guard Bureau . So , beth , thanks for joining us today .
Speaker 3Thanks for having me and happy anniversary . Thank Beth .
Speaker 1thanks for joining us today , thanks for having me and happy anniversary , thank you , and have a good day . Thanks , all of the above . All of the above , all of the above . Yeah Well , we could totally derail this and start talking about coffee and espresso machines . I'm refraining , I'm totally refraining .
Speaker 2I know , yeah , I think when Beth .
Speaker 1I'm totally refraining .
Speaker 2I know I'm looking at my pods over there that I'm not making right now .
Speaker 1Yeah , I probably wasted like 15 minutes of our 30-minute call .
Speaker 3when I first talked to Beth about doing this episode , I didn't talk to her all day too .
Speaker 1Yeah , well , let's get started . So you know , I did the I don't even know like two , second , five second rundown of your career . So pretty much got everything , I'm sure . But why we ? Before we get too far into the , our main topic , what could you share a little more about your career journey ? And then I know I personally like to hear about you know , as people look back on their career , um , you know , as people look back on their career , pivotal moments or people that made it kind of made an outsized uh impact on your career directory , uh trajectory yeah , absolutely , I have had a very fun and interesting career um working across a lot of different industries , but I think one of the most pivotal moments , probably the most pivotal moment- is my first
Speaker 3digital marketing agency , or my first digital marketing job . I studied marketing in college and my first job out of college was with a small luxury outdoor living spaces company . I was the marketing coordinator and I did everything from emails , or rather mailers and postcards we had a website to landscape layout design to taking my boss's dog to physical therapy so the wiring thing that you could do it's a dog . That didn't last very long . One of my friends was working at a digital agency and I got a job there .
Speaker 3I fell in love with digital marketing almost right away because I was so fascinated by the ability to measure everything right away , basically , and the ability then to make a change based upon the insights that you were able to gather . It sounds silly to say that today , but you know , that's what I was putting , you know . So we were just on the cusp of it . So , yeah , so I just fell in love with it and again , um , that was probably the most pivotal moment , because I've never left digital marketing , but I've done , you know , every job has been in a different agency and it's just been um , a lot of fun .
Marketing Lessons Across Industries
Speaker 3And then , speaking about pivotal people , I think everybody on this podcast and everybody listening can say positive and negative , because it's old people that they've said in their career . True and so .
Speaker 1Yeah , I think that's funny . You've asked that question of a number of people . I think you're the first person who's brought up that sad fact . But yes , absolutely true . Yeah .
Speaker 3Yeah , and I mean using that and making sure , ok , if it was , like you know , a bad manager or whatever , the case is that you just don't get into that again and you know that can change your trajectory of your career as well .
Speaker 1Yeah , I mean , I know I learned from situations like that the kind of leader I did not want to be Exactly , exactly . I'm sure Mike is Now . Mike , you haven't run into anything like that , have you ? You know , just like you know people you'd rather not . We don't need to name names , yeah .
Speaker 3No naming names .
Speaker 2I won't . I won't name names , but certainly have , I think , just to bring it sort of back towards some of the normal or common things that we hear in the market . Right like you fail , fail often , fail fast , like those kinds of things , because you learn more from your failures , right like I think you learn just as much from situations too , uh , if not more , right ?
Speaker 1um , I think it accelerates your ability to understand what you value in a career or a role , because careers and jobs are two different sort of things to talk about , but it definitely teaches you very quickly , right , what you , what you want out of , uh , of your working relationships okay yeah no doubt that's interesting because so literally earlier today I was listening to a podcast episode with adam grant if you know , you're familiar with him , is , and it was about um if you know , you're familiar with him is , and it was about um , essentially like how , uh , the pursuit of , uh , culture fit can go wrong , right , and then you lose diversity and stuff .
Speaker 1And I actually what I was thinking about it because I've been a big believer that culture fit was , was really important when you look for things . But then I thought about it after listening to that , I think really to me it's a values fit , right , the values align , as opposed to culture , because culture is sort of , in my view , like , either intentionally or not , right , culture is the manifestation of the real values of an organization and so the signs on the wall don't really mean a whole lot if the actual behaviors that are reinforced and celebrated are not aligned with that . So , um , totally random that I happened to listen , well , today , and you brought that up , but it's been at the top of my mind all day it's or the back of my mind all day today well , good so um , you know , you've you've done a number of things , working different places , different industries .
Speaker 1I think it's really interesting because you worked in , I guess it's sort of a quasi-government organization , along with for-profit kinds of places as well . What are some of the lessons that you've learned along the way as you kind of transition from one to the other ? And , uh , maybe even a little bit about I'm throwing you a little bit of a curveball here a little bit about , like , how did you , as you were pursuing new ventures , right , how did you take those other lessons that may not be obvious to someone in this new industry ? Like , how did you pitch you , market yourself , if you will . And then , what other ways has it helped you , you think , along the way to help your career ?
Speaker 3Great questions . I've never , yeah , as we've talked about , I've worked in a bunch of different industries . I've never worked in the same industry . Job over job , every job has been a new industry and I never really thought about it as something that was a bad thing . I , you know , I just found a job that I liked , job description that I liked , and a company that I thought was cool or interesting and went for it . And I think , um , marketing yourself , I think no matter which industry you're in , the same marketing principles apply and it's the levers that you pull across those industries . Um , for example , at the national guard , I'm a contractor there , um , and we were working on their support programs , um , and bringing you know awareness to the support programs for guardsmen and families , and we didn't have an advertising budget . So I had just come from a digital agency where we had all the advertising budget I mean what , what ?
Speaker 1would you , why would you need an advertising budget for your captured audience right ?
Speaker 3for , yes , true , we were also getting out the word about it . A lot of people have the new um , not a new entity , but essentially an umbrella over these . You know seven support programs that we had had , and so we you know email , website , social , and then conferences like we went to conferences all over and did keynotes and demos , and you know wearing boots and talking to guardsmen as they would walk by saying , hey , do you have a minute ? Hey , you know the amount of no's that I got . Um was incredible .
Speaker 3But then , moving to um diazio , we had advertising budgets and things like that , but because of the laws in our country , some of which I think are still from prohibition that we haven't gotten rid of , you couldn't sell direct on a brand website .
Speaker 3You couldn't sell alcohol direct on brand website . You couldn't sell alcohol direct on a brand website . And so the lever that we had to pull was the conversion , basically is how do you get people aware of my functionality ? Essentially and that was the driver that was like our conversion of people going to that part of the city , finding a retailer , finding a bar or restaurant , whatever the case is , and so just pulling the different levers and crafting a message for your audience . You know legally what you could and couldn't do , and I think it's the same when you go from one industry to the other . You can use examples of things that you've done , problems that you've solved , and you know for me now , I've worked in like five different industries and so it's an easier , it's an easy play or an easier conversation versus going from digital agency and hospitality industry to the militaries , to , you know , luxury spirits . But as you build that , it becomes very clear that you can't do it and you have again the same principles apply , just the levers that you pull will be different .
Speaker 1I think it's interesting and I know we're going to talk a little bit about some of the similarities and differences between B2B and B2C operations . But that story you just told about Diageo and the limits on what you could do in terms of I'll call it your call to action , right ?
Speaker 1lot of b2b companies have when it goes from advertising to , you know , sale ? Yes , exactly . How do you tie back what you did as a marketer to some sort of end result , which ultimately is you want people to the diageo example is and you want people to go to a retailer and buy the products , and so you've got this sort of bridge that you have to get .
Speaker 1You know you have to build between that activity , the , the buyer activity and the activity you did as a marketer . So I mean , is it ? I'm curious , is this ? Now I'm really throwing a curveball like how is that ? How is that something that you like ? How is that typically solved in that beat is I guess it's kind of not direct to consumers , so but it's b2c model , like how do you , how do you , how did you measure that ?
Speaker 3one of my colleagues actually built a dashboard so we could live time , get what , and so each brand site that we had was individual , but the where to buy site or the map for the where to buy app in a central repository and put it into all of those , all of the brands that Diageo owned . So like John Walker , don Julio , kettle , wands , murdona , captain Morgan , all Greats , guinness , and so we were able to track which of those brands people were looking for , where in the country people were looking for them , and so if we were doing a campaign and sent out an email or something like that , we could start to track within that dashboard of where people were searching track within that dashboard of where people were searching .
Speaker 1Oh , okay , so it was a little bit about like surge in activity and something that was you believe was sort of a step in the path to purchase . Is that a fair way of saying it ? Okay , absolutely . Yeah , I mean that's a . Well , mike , you were in the ad tech space . I mean , did you deal with that when you were in that space , like as well ?
Speaker 2yeah , a little bit . Um , I was on the ad tech side for more like the , the technology that helped deploy all of the sort of retargeting and the inventory that was bought across . Like , my first start was inventory , otherwise empty spaces . Right , for those of us that are martech nerds , it's your iframe for better sorts . Right , there's an iframe that sits on a website . Someone purchases the rights to be able to , like , serve an ad into it and then there's our these RTB , real-time bidding activities that happen , um , and that ad network is is spread across . You know the cookies and all the things right to be able to retarget people , um , so I was kind of in that space .
Speaker 2You know , I think back , whatever , however , whatever , however many is probably that was over a decade ago . Um , I think I always questioned like how accurate is this Cause ? Like you know you , you put these like , when I went from the ad trafficker to the account manager side , there's the like , um , you know , just like , if you're running Google ads , for those of you that I've experienced you're sort of like figuring out which target , demos and stuff you want to go after . I've always questioned like , okay , it says , like you know , male , female , 30 to 50 car buyer right and it was like its own proprietary , like um system , I'm like really .
Speaker 2The PaaS is actually working . Yeah , it's interesting .
Speaker 1You seem like you're surprised that you just had to say it was a decade ago , mike , yeah .
Speaker 2Well , it was over a decade ago , I just don't remember exactly how long .
Speaker 1Yeah .
Speaker 2It's changed . When I went into the mobile ad tech side of things , that got even more convoluted . Targeting got even more specific at that point , right For the most part , and what's fascinating is that there's many layers there , right , like sometimes you're serving ads through a game that's a freemium product versus web anyway . So wild , wild world , but yeah , so a little bit , a little bit of that came into my world too , but yeah , yes , okay , was there anything we didn't , beth , that you wanted to touch on there ?
Speaker 3I don't know , I think , oh , I think one of the things that I didn't want to mention that once I got to Nespresso and you know that was direct consumer e-commerce you could sell directly .
Speaker 3That is when I really started like that's when the operations part of my career started because we did have , you know , we have an email team , we had a social team . We had , you know , sales team . We had all teams and the main point , you know , sales team we had , we had all teams and , as the main point , you know , managing the website , and that's where all of our not all of our sales , but the majority of the sales were coming through . You work with a lot of different people to make sure that what's going on this day is one accurate , two useful , um , three , seamless for the customer to get from point A to point B and then convert , and you know that involves every single department , and so I think that's really , again , that's really where my operation experience started to thrive , I would say .
Speaker 2Gotcha , I love this I've been saying for so long .
Speaker 2Mike was up there clapping his hands for our listeners Literally clapping as you were saying that for our listeners . The reason I love this is and I'll sort of try to ask you a little bit more about this , beth but I've been saying for a long time , and I'm sure I'm not the only one , right , but when I have the chance I get to say , uh , b2c has been doing marketing operations for a lot longer than B2B has . Uh , they just don't call it that , right , like generally speaking . They sort of refer to it as all the other names that you're that you're naming off Right Life cycle marketers , marketing automation , email marketers , website managers , all this other stuff . Why do you say marketing operations isn't like a title or like a common point of discussion in that world ? Is it just because it's like evolved from the landscape ? I don't know . What are your thoughts ?
Speaker 3I don't know , this may be a silly response , but I think separation is too . I I don't think it's boring , but I think people think that the word operation is boring and so it's not as creative . As marketer or website manager , you know it doesn't have that kind of marketing , creative
Marketing Operations in B2C and B2B
Speaker 3appeal , but it's . I mean , you're coordinating across departments to make sure that things happen and so you're making sure things operate effectively and therefore , you will end operations .
Speaker 2Yeah , my word of the day is germane I do it is germane to . I already said that when they say that because I used it earlier somehow , um , but I feel like it is germane to . I already said that I only say that because I used it earlier somehow , but I feel like it's germane to your ability to go to market . Modern marketing can't happen without MarTech and marketing operations , absolutely .
Speaker 1When I think about , my first step into the marketing realm was at a . It was my one and really my only B2C experience . It was really my only B2C experience and I think my role was in database marketing , which today would be probably called something different , but it had a heavy bent towards IT and I think in large organizations that's maybe part of it too . It's not seen as a marketing thing , it's more of a technology thing only , although I don't agree with that . But do you think there's a perception Agreed ? So yeah , just as a total aside , I know I've been helping my mother-in-law dealing with a not-to-be-named cable company who could really use somebody like you help them with their fucking website . I'm sorry , yeah , um it's been a lovely .
Speaker 3It is incredible . It is incredible . Another one of the cool things that I did in this breath , though , was um , user user experience , ufui . I didn't do the design myself , but I managed a lot of that and Vespresso , owned by Netflix , has obviously different markets Obviously the US market , right , et cetera and so we had to work with HQ headquarters over in Switzerland a lot , and so I worked with that team , the global team , because we just used a template basically across all the different countries , and it was incredible to see how hard we make it for people sometimes to buy things that we're trying to sell them , and it's not hard to change it , but I think a lot of these companies have these legacy , potentially proprietary platforms that they're using that get in the way of so much potential yeah , and , and you know , can't agree more .
Speaker 2Ironically , hartman , I was live chatting with my cable company just the other day and maybe the same one .
Speaker 1I'm just saying that's the good thing .
Speaker 2I mean , this is literally three days ago , my wife's with it . I mean , will you leave the person alone ? Like , for once , the answer is yes .
Speaker 2This is ridiculous , and so the the what . Where I'm going with this , though , beth , is , like you know , here you are talking about like sort of top of funnel pre-conversion , why this is so difficult , and then sort of like , broadly speaking , the reason why marketing operations and rev ops categorically if you want to go so far as to call it that is so germane to everything , is that I'm going to stop using that for all the listeners . I promise that'll be the last time today , and the is that my experience was sort of the opposite . So here it is , inside of my customer portal . I can go explore new options , and it's telling me oh , there's this price , yet I'm being charged $20 more a month for the thing that is literally advertised as a thing that I can sign up for . Still , I was like , at least , at least in my logged in environment , don't show me the marketing one , show me the one that I'm not allowed to have anymore , which is the one that I'm paying for .
Speaker 2In reality , I was just giving the . I was trying to be somewhat polite , but I was trying to illustrate the point with the customer person Like , hey , your website says something completely different . Right , I'm being charged . I felt bad for this person . When you think about the relevance category . How do they know that ? Right , like , can they impersonate me Like I don't know , but this stuff , matt like . So I guess , for the listeners , right when I've said in the past and and you know , beth , hopefully you agree with this you have such an incredible opportunity to look across the customer journey and the tech stack that that supports every aspect of that , because in most cases , you have access to most of those tools and most other people don't . And this is your opportunity to like , use your curiosity to go like , figure out , like , when you have a personal experience like this , if you're chatting with your cable company and you work at one of the cable companies and you're listening to this , go log in and assist . It's really so . Maybe this is a problem I just experienced myself .
Speaker 1I should go see if we had that problem I don't want to take this too far , deb , but this is exactly why I hate , really hate , the term internal customers , because my guess is there's some sort of teams internally who are committed to serving their internal customers well , what they don't say , but what happens often is that means that they're optimizing for people inside the company , not for actual customers , and and then you have people have a customer , actual customer experiences that are shitty , yeah , and I think that's a big miss , like that's one of those things . So when when I hear things like you know we value our internal customers , I'm like I don't care , we don't need them . I mean , I understand the sentiment , but I always Absolutely .
Speaker 1Yeah , Like , ultimately we all have our jobs at these companies because actual customers are paying us for some sort of service that they get value out of or , in Mike's case , apparently that they're stuck with .
Speaker 2Yes , primarily on this , which is what I'm dealing with .
Speaker 1No matter now , but an upside there , okay , well , let's . So . I didn't want I was almost ready to go into this anyway with these things , but one of the things I think we've danced around a little bit here is this notion that there's probably more commonality between B2B and B2C marketing and marketing operations than there is differences . And I think what triggered you ending up here on this is that you , I think , had read the 2024 State of the MoPro report and I think you were struck , as more of a B2c person with some exposure to b2b , you know how many of the things that were top of mind for b2b marketing ops folks were also things that b2c people were dealing with . So maybe talk a little bit about you know what were some of those things that stood out to you and why , and if you've got examples of like what that really looks like in a bdc side , I would love to hear those as well absolutely so .
Speaker 3when I first , I read the report a couple of times . Um , it's really interesting , which is why I read it a couple of times , but I kept having to remind myself that it was B2B people that were responding to this Because , like you just said , there are so many similarities between the two and there was one section where I think people who were taking the survey that went into the study they could write in responses of things that are , you know , requirements of their jobs or whatever the case is , and I'd have a whole list . So it's like web management , project management , campaign management , strategy , budget , AI ,
Marketing Operations in B2B and B2C
Speaker 3innovation , like all of those things we're doing on B2B2 , on the B2B design as well . You know , web management . You've got to be able to coordinate with , in addition to developers and various things like that . You've got to be able to coordinate with the brand team and the creative team to make sure that , again , what you're putting up on the site is correct . To make sure that , again , what you're putting up on the site is correct . You've got to coordinate with the sales team to make sure that the promos are correct , the product team for making sure that all details about the product is correct .
Speaker 3I think , when you get into vendor and IT management too , we have different platforms that you can use for managing a site and so negotiating contracts and making sure that you have the budget . And then if you have two or three different tools that you're using , how do they all work together ? We have to make sure that they all can work together so that we're not just spending money to spend money and then can't actually use the thing . You just pay the total rate . And then I think this you know , AI innovation . We've all been using AI for a very long time . People haven't been calling it that necessarily , but we have been .
Speaker 3And but you know it's only going to get more and more involved and even within the ai model you have to use a couple different ones sometimes in order to get to a response . So I think you know from a b2b , b2c pride , there's a lot of similarities between what you know y'all are working on and what we are .
Speaker 2I could not agree more . I keep advocating for more and more B2C folks . I mean honestly , like the whole I don't want to say the whole team but a good amount of individuals from Ford and Hyatt and a number of other B2C companies came to Mopsapalooza this year and many of them walked up to me and were like love this , love everything everybody's talking about . How do we get more B2C people here ? Right , like we need to talk more about this stuff categorically and get more of these folks in the room . And I'm like , yeah , let's do it , we need that and really selfishly , and really selfishly for the sake of the , the betterment of all of us in the community , we need to learn from the B2C folks who are dealing with a really quite complex like customer journeys and data set . Their , their data models and data sets are just larger .
Speaker 1So the volume of data in the B2C world is like I don't even know what the right multiple is , but it's greater than 10x . I think , In most instances .
Speaker 2Yeah , so anyway , I couldn't agree more .
Speaker 2But to the point of all of these things that we're all trying to wrap our arms around in this role call it market animation , lifecycle marketer , marketing operations , rev ops , whatever Part of the reason we want everybody in here is to also say , hey , let's put some guardrails in place .
Speaker 2Let's , let's put some guardrails in place , let's try to be cautious of like , how much is too much ? At what point do you need to appoint a specialist into a very big part of the tech stack ? And and what is that sort of threshold and what are the limitations ? And how do we make sure you get paid for the value that you bring to the organization and all that stuff ? Right ? So this is like , yes , we want everybody to learn from each other , but simultaneously we want to publish material , much like we do in the marketing , the state of the mo pro report to to try to educate executive leaders and other managers and board members of like , uh , no , you cannot just throw everything to this one magical unicorn person that , yes , can figure it out , but like that's not fair right , absolutely , I was .
Speaker 3I'm just gonna say that , so I will reiterate it . But I will say agreed , wholeheart , yeah , I mean even Flick .
Speaker 1I think there's a real benefit to , even though there are going to be nuances and things that are different , right , so maybe the specific technologies are different or the specific needs for reporting and analytics are different . I had that sort of epiphany that there's an analog in the B2B marketing analytics space of trying to tie marketing activity to call it revenue or benefit to what you're dealing with , where there's a similar challenge that's happening in the B2C world , particularly if you're not a to consumer , and I'm like , well , maybe there's ideas that can be shared where , okay , we figured this out , this is how we do it in the B2C world , when we're not direct to consumer that maybe you can apply to what you're doing in a B2B space and vice versa . Right , absolutely .
Speaker 3And I think also that magical unicorn that you were talking about , mike , if you are one of those people , you're going to figure it out . Even if you've never worked with the Ford or you've never heard of it , you can figure it out , and figure out if it works or if it doesn't work , everything , I think for marketing operations . People are quote-unquote , figureoutable yeah .
Speaker 1People who give a shit and are curious and want to make things successful . So it's kind of the DNA .
Speaker 2I agree , yeah , I agree . I think for listeners , we are all advocating and encouraging you to say you are absolutely capable , like you probably know that about yourself . But if you need someone to tell you you are a hundred percent capable of figuring stuff out , um , but I think in the , in the event that you have a manager friend that you've ever worked with or has ever questioned what this role is all about , send them this episode and then I am telling them right now to next time you are trying to hire someone , um , don't be like you have to have five years of marquetto experience or whatever the frick like , please . Yes , I totally get it . Okay , I run an organization now . I get the speed and efficiency and , like the , the ramp up time .
Speaker 2All those things are important . I totally understand you want to hit the ground running , no , crawling , walking and running right . But also , just , this is one of those roles where , if you give somebody a chance , I'll I'll die on the hill of . They'll probably stay at your company for longer because you gave them a chance and and then they got deeply entrenched into the excitement of your business and , as long as your culture is a good fit , they'll probably hang around .
Speaker 1They'll give somebody else a chance that doesn't have the experience , because they're going to be curious enough to go figure that out yeah , the way I've thought about it as a as when I've hired as I , I will hire for attitude over aptitude , just about any time , assuming there's a minimum level of aptitude . So , yeah , if I got people with the right attitude , who can learn and are coachable and uh , want to achieve and , um , they're willing to try stuff and know that they're not . You know , I'm the kind of leader where I'm not going to hold it Like if they do something intentionally bad , right , that's a different thing . But if they make a mistake , right , that's a learning opportunity .
Speaker 1And I think that it's funny . I'm going to go back to that Adam Grant episode I just listened to . Had a similar thing talking about how job descriptions are so bad at describing , like all these , aptitude things as opposed to attitude things and tying them back to values or culture , depending on how you want to use them .
Speaker 1at the organization and there was somebody on there I can't remember who the guest was who said really you should be looking for people who match that more than the aptitude . Do you need people that meet a certain threshold Absolutely , but once you get past that certain threshold it kind of doesn't matter .
Speaker 3Well and I think it can be a positive thing versus somebody that , oh , this is how I've always used this tool , this is the way that I did it at my last job . This is the way that you should be doing it , and then if you have somebody that is learning it for the first time , it's fresh eyes on her and the implementations you can . It can be so much more fruitful if somebody is learning it for the first time and sourcing help from other marketing . You know operations professionals that have used that before , and no matter what the industry , because then they can take those experiences and apply it to you know what their company is or whatever the case is . So I would be , yeah , sure , like you're saying , minimum experience , but yeah , well , okay , so we talked about things that are common , right ?
Speaker 1what do you see whether they should be or not , right ?
Speaker 3things that are seem to be unique to b2c and b2b , like where there are differences today this is a fun one , I think , because it really just comes back to marketing principles and how you're talking to the customer that you're trying to sell to . So you know we're not b2c basis . You know you're selling a product or a service to more you know an individual person and so you want to create that emotional connection or emotional need with the product or service that you're trying to sell , and so you're pulling on the heartstrings of an individual versus B2B . You know you're trying to justify the ROI of selling something and you're trying to , you know , educate the potential customer on how it will help your resource management or whatever the case is . So that is very fact-based . So you're pulling more on a head string versus the heart strings of B2C Love that .
Speaker 3Yeah , Again , it's just who you're talking like , which are demographic and how are they going to respond ? I think that there are instances where you could pull on the heartstrings with B2B and vice versa with B2C , but you know for the most part , it's pretty simple .
Speaker 1Yeah .
Speaker 1I love how different it is , I think uh , there's a lot of B2B marketing that I don't know how to put it , other than it's a little too buttoned up Right and um , I think there's room to be . I think there should be people who are more willing to realize that they're . Yes , ultimately there's going to be some other business entity where the check's going to come from for whatever they buy , but at the end of the day , it's individual people who are making the decisions and , yes , you might think they're going to be more , more rational than an individual person , but I , I actually don't think that's true . I think , I mean , this is the whole reason why behavioral economics is around is because people weren't behaving rationally right . So , uh , an individual level . So , um , I mean , what's your do you think ? Do you think there should be a little more like ? Should those ? Should these things be more alike in b2b and bc ? Do you think there should be a little more ? Should these things be more alike in B2B and B2C worlds ? Do you think ?
Speaker 3I think it comes down to who your audience is . And if you're trying to get to know your audience , it's just like what's your target demo ? Like if I'm trying to sell , you know , a spa day to somebody , that's going to be very different than if I'm trying to sell a triathlon , or like a spartan race or something like that . You know you're going to approach that with two totally different messages and , um , you know , creative and all of those different things . So I think that I don't think it's a problem that they're different , because I think it's just the marketing principle of weakening with your target audience . But I do to what you said about B2B being more buttoned up . I think there can be a little bit more fun injected and creativity injected into those types of messages yeah , we just too many people in b2b take theater themselves too seriously , you know well , they do in b2c as well .
Speaker 3Oh , they do . Okay , that's different .
Speaker 2That is the common big I've always been so excited by , by the levers you get to pull on in the b2c landscape versus the b2b I think I think b2b marketing is way , way harder , um , just because you just have fewer , fewer elements to to . You know , levered I I I don't want to pretend like like , that's the best way I can describe it I , you know , for those of you who get offended by that , I'm sorry , um , that . I just think it's more difficult , like you have like more complex buying cycles that take longer and you have less of a um , the decision criteria is far more complex . Usually there's a stakeholder committee that's trying to buy from the things that you're selling , and so I think that creates a more complex buyer journey and stuff like that . And I always enjoyed the nature or the fantasy of what it must be like to be a B2B marketer , even though that's complex . I've never really done a ton of it .
Speaker 3I've done little bits here and there , but what is the cost of what you're selling to ? Yeah , like sure , it's all you know for all intents and purposes for this conversation . Sure is easier to sell than bb solution .
Speaker 2Yeah , you know , that's a much shorter fifty thousand dollar software purchase versus a you know whatever . Call it a fifty dollar , whatever .
Speaker 1Yes well , the downside of a mistake is , yeah , or that , or the , the cost of mistake is much lower , right , so okay , so it's interesting , sir . You said that's you think there should be a little difference , that maybe there's some overlap , but , um , so one
Marketing Operations and Loyalty Programs
Speaker 1of the things that and this is I'm trying to remember who it was I think it was , maybe it was Chris Willis Like somebody posted on LinkedIn not too long ago saying that you know , if you go back to classical marketing training , right , you get the four p's right , and really most marketing teams are focusing on just one these days . Right , the promotion piece . And , um , I'm curious if you're seeing anything like . Are you seeing again , it's like similarities or differences in the bdc world where you've been ? Are you seeing more focus on just promotion and less about ? I can't remember if I can remember all the the four p's evenly . So it's product placement , pricing , promotion right , did I get them right ?
Speaker 3all right , so what do you see ? Yeah , seeing the same thing in b2c across a couple of the companies that I've worked for , and I think there's always going to be attention . Um , you know , okay , you set your price and then you have the promotion for it . When do you pull ? You know , a percentage off or a buy one , get one , or something like that when do you ?
Speaker 3when do you go with that ? And there's always going to be the tension between that . Um , I think a lot of you know in the experience that I've had the conversations and that that tension is between are we training our customers to be on that ? We're always going to be on promotion and so they're not going to buy something at full price . Okay , that's not good , that you're training your customers to wait for this down , but but then it also could potentially erode their customer loyalty in terms of , well , why are they always on sale ? Is there something wrong with the product ? Why aren't people buying it on full price ? And so I think that in terms of those purchases for the customers , there could be some erosion of that brand affinity if you are always in promotion .
Speaker 3Now , I know that anybody that's listening in on finance seamless , they'll see . In fact , you know there are two sides to that coin , um , and so I think that that's where it comes in again with the operation of operations and looking at data and saying , okay , well , in that month , with this percentage off over the last four years , these are the results that we've gotten . If we add in another promotion a month before , are we just robbing people to pay for it , or is there actually going to be incremental um to yeah , yeah , it's uh , we have a unique environment at marketingoffscom and that , like we , we have partners that support us and sponsor us , our community , right .
Speaker 2And then we've got we've got a membership model and we've got tickets and uh , and so in some ways there's this concept of b2c happening and I've I've often brought those , those things up right where it's like , oh , if we you know , I don't know run a discount for membership or we run a discount for the tickets to Mopsapalooza or whatever , um , people like are just always going to expect that thing . Right , and when I was at an agency we were selling um shirts for one of these , one of these shirt brands out there and they're like it was like every other weekend . It was like every other weekend there was like a promo email that was going out and all that stuff . And what's fascinating is that I think , like the , the , the ecosystem adapted , the MarTech ecosystem adapted , and they were like , oh , you know what'll solve this ? Loyalty programs . Now it can be always on promotion , but then have loyalty and get them to come back .
Speaker 3And then it's like , okay , now we're not robbing t for paul and all this other stuff . The loyalty is a free shipping threshold and uh promise delivery . So am Amazon .
Speaker 2Yeah , yeah , yeah , totally Right .
Speaker 1Well , I can think of at least one other brand where I'm loyal because I get consistent deals pushed to me and I don't go there all that often , but I go there often enough where it's like it's worth it for me to trade off like fighting them , and I cause I know like I'm sharing a whole bunch of data about me , what I care about , um , but it's yeah like I know that I air quotes right . Save a bunch of money over the course of a year by doing that yeah , totally .
Speaker 2I mean , I , I don't . I have , having been in B2B for my entire career , basically , uh , b2b , saas at that I've always like and this'll be for another day , another , another episode maybe Uh , but I've always like been fascinated , like how do you create a loyalty program for B2B business ? Like how does that happen ? Happen , because it's actually quite complex , you know , like the renewal cycles and all that other stuff , and like the gamification models that go into the usage of the product , and I think we're starting to see more of that now with the usage based type of , at least in the sass side of things .
Speaker 1but anyway , yeah , well , I think , some , I think . I think actually , the way that that was done or has been done well is through community right . So you get your most engaged customers to be your own advocates and , by the way , they also provide support . So you don't have as many support people . So and I think about that with me all the big marketing automation platforms have that yeah .
Speaker 2It's just no , I agree with you . I think you know we saw companies like influitive kind of do this like crazy blip for for a while , right , where they were like this huge $10 million whatever entity and influencer marketing kind of was happening at the same time on the B2C side . But what's interesting about the concept of loyalty gamification and pricing structures in that world , thinking about that community referral , customer marketing kind of stuff , is that like to your point earlier , beth , right , the pulling on the heartstrings versus the headstrings thing . It's unintuitive for you as an employee to feel compelled to use a B2B product in service of benefiting your organization , and so what I mean by that is like if I were to build a true loyalty program , I would say things like oh , if you um , you know , hit this certain threshold of usage , we're gonna guarantee you , uh , five hundred dollars off your next seat . That you add , right . But the thing is is like the person doesn't care what the company gets .
Speaker 2look , yeah right , it's uh , like that sense of gamification , doesn't ? Like it just doesn't . Those two things don't work together . And so I've always been challenged like how do you do that instrumentation ? But that benefits the organization and the individual and it's not like in fluid of which was , which was an interesting product . But like , oh cool , hubspot says I need to go like share this blog post and like retweet this thing because I was in their marketplace , right , their hub stars thing back in the day I was like their top advocate .
Speaker 2I got like a bunch of gift cards right because I was constantly doing the things and eventually I was kind of like over it , um , but like , and so really it benefited them and it benefited me , but it did nothing for for like I think it's like you're not actually supporting . You know , it's not like my company got a benefit of me spending my time championing the product that I loved it's complex random tangent sorry yeah it was .
Speaker 2I think it's fit . The intersections of these worlds in martech and how they're all supporting these go-to-market notions is fascinating yeah , you know who could solve it a marketing operation uniform , that's true .
Speaker 1I totally agree . Yeah , I think that's probably a good place for us to wrap up , and actually we need to wrap up . So , beth , thank you so much . It's been great . I've enjoyed this conversation . I'm sure our audience will be benefiting from it as well . But if folks want to learn more from you or keep up with what you're doing or talking about , what's the best way for them to do that ?
Speaker 3LinkedIn Good old LinkedIn .
Speaker 1All right , linkedin it is . I don't even think I should ask this question anymore . I think it's me . That's actually not true . There have been . We do have guests who there are some others .
Speaker 1Yeah , so again , thank you , beth , mike . Always great to have you along as well . Thanks to our listeners out there for continuing to support us and coming up with ideas and suggestions , and guests . If you are interested in being guests or have suggestions , please reach out to Naomi , mike or me and we'd be happy to chat with you about that and keeping things moving Until next time . Bye , everyone .
Speaker 3Bye .
Speaker 1Thank , you See ya .