Getting smarter about the future of B2B marketing

Announcer:
Looking for the inside scoop on tech marketing. You’re listening to XTech XTRA, the bite sized series brought to you by the experts at Fox Agency.

Debbie Forster MBE:
I’m your host, Debbie Forster MBE. Join me as I take a deep dive into the expertise of those who live and breathe B2B marketing every day. The Fox Agency team. Now today I’m delighted to be joined by Karen Guyer, the Lead Consultant in Industry and Connectivity here at Fox Agency. Welcome, Karen.

Karen Guyer:
Oh, thank you, Debbie. It’s lovely to be here.

Debbie Forster MBE:
Oh, we’ve got so much to talk about but I like starting with understanding how you got to this chair. So can you tell me about your career so far and how you joined us here at Fox?

Karen Guyer:
Oh, well, I’ve been in the creative industry a long time. I originally studied design and then later business. So brand and marketing has always been a really good fit. Through my career, I’ve been really lucky to work with lots and lots of global clients across. I started in B2C and then in B2B for big wide range of sectors. So fintech, SaaS, culture, healthcare, all sorts, tech, bit of aviation and some manufacturing. And mainly the industry brands that I now work with supply into those sectors. So actually that detailed knowledge has been really useful.

Debbie Forster MBE:
Great, okay, so lots of experience that you bring into the table and across all the industries, you got all the T shirts, I’m aware of that. Now you’re the Lead Consultant in Industry and Connectivity and you work with some of the most advanced industrial and engineering businesses in the world. From your perspective, what’s changed the most in this space over the last few years?

Karen Guyer:
Whoa. So much change. Lots of investment around AI, which is obviously, I’m sure anybody that you’re interviewing will say that, but it’s impacting decision makers and those buyer journeys which is really important in B2B. So for industries that are all built on this relationship, selling, you know, it’s a really big mindset shift – they’re needing now to navigate, you know, AI selection processes that they never needed to do before. You know, LLMs are shortlisting industrial vendors long before they get into anywhere near sales are contacted. So, you know, I think the next development will be around these AI agencies doing the evaluation, you know, the comparative piece and even the recommending.

Karen Guyer:
So I hear by next year a large share of those industrial RFPs will be pre screened by AI agents working from, you know, that machine ready evidence already and third party reviews and their sustainability disclosures and maybe even, you know, index content. So it’s a big shift.

Debbie Forster MBE:
Right. So AI is going to undercut everything. It’s changing the rules on so many things. If many industrial businesses are category leaders and they’re sophisticated from an engineering perspective, why do you think so many of the brands in this space lack the visibility, the fame that their capability deserves

Karen Guyer:
I think industrial corporate brands, the heritage brands and so many of them have become logos. But they live in engineering cultures and those engineering led cultures often assume that the product is the marketing and that amazing technology will just magically find a buyer on its own. It’s frustrating in some ways because as the marketing budgets then get pulled to that short term demand activity and it starves the brand of the investment that’s really needed to build the mental availability that’s needed to support the demand activities. So it’s a vicious circle really.

Debbie Forster MBE:
And I think it is that change. It’s not engineer to engineer anymore, it’s not specification and that sort of excitement, we have to really change it. So I know that we say the best technology can lose to a simpler story, told better. What does it look like in practice, Karen?

Karen Guyer:
Well, we all know that strong B2B brands can command premiums, they have shorter sales cycles and higher win rates and the weaker ones lose the competition and get squeezed on the tenders. You know, that is common knowledge in B2B and probably B2C to be fair. But to build brand led growth it’s about taking a really integrated approach. You know, starting with the data, not with the creative and looking at where the brand sits on fame, on share of search, on importantly LLM visibility and market perception. And then really using that insight to develop that unified campaign platform, you know, a core idea that enables separate business units and regions to confidently be able to activate together, you know, one coherent narrative to build the brand.

Karen Guyer:
And what happens is it still allows for activation, flexibility that so you know, you’ve got specific audience targeting and tailored creative and all the important things, you know, like media measurement that make up those campaigns per vertical to drive that demand. But it moves away from being just a comms layer and starts being recognized for driving growth.

Debbie Forster MBE:
Okay, so let me play this through and see if it makes sense to me. Does that mean features performance don’t even matter anymore? Are we leaving that behind? You know, I hear that already. The revolution of data first, then the creative. Where are businesses looking for differentiation if it’s no longer just about the features and performance?

Karen Guyer:
Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean these, this market is full of Incredible, excellent engineering. You know, these businesses do exceptional things, but they assume that buyers can just evaluate that and they can’t. You know, as we touched on earlier, those buying committees are larger now. They’ve got broader focus and remit, you know, and customers buy outcomes, whereas engineers buy features. So, you know, but by wrapping legacy hardware in software and services and hybrid ecosystems, like many of our clients are doing at the moment, it moves that relationship, you know, it moves it from transactional and technical to embedded and consultative. And that’s where that creative differentiation comes from, you know, because it’s really hard for competitors to replicate that.

Debbie Forster MBE:
It makes it stickier, doesn’t it? If you’re wrapping those things together, you’re really making a much longer relationship come through, aren’t you?

Karen Guyer:
And it’s a far more strategic relationship because it’s consultative, it’s problem solving.

Debbie Forster MBE:
Yeah, exactly. So then help me figure this, take it the next step further. What does strong positioning and storytelling look like in a market that is just in, as you said, becoming so commoditized?

Karen Guyer:
It’s about really finding something, you know, that ownable category claim, clear targeting, you know, distinctive, creative, all those things that we really know. But having something that sits at the heart that is, you know, that is really true to that brand and that business. You know, framing the product story, underpinning it with an outcome based language, return on investment, total cost of ownership, you know, the things that resonate with these Chief Revenue Officers and these Chief Financial Officers that are now making some of those decisions. And sales conversations, I think that are led by customers, commercial problems, you know, what we talked about before doing that strategic positioning, that problem solving piece, not their product roadmap. That from an engineering perspective. So you’re using the story to get the meeting and using the engineering to close the deal.

Debbie Forster MBE:
And I think that’s a real shift in thinking. It’s moving away from that binary of one or the other. It’s understanding how they link together. Okay, all right. But these same industry leaders, these same brands, they’re not just an individual entity, are they? There’s a lot of global industrial businesses that are operating across multiple divisions, multiple regions. Why do corporate, brand and divisional go to market so often end up disconnected, you know, and what impact does that have?

Karen Guyer:
I think if I’m honest, it’s down to organizational structure and metric mismatches rather than comms. I think. You know, corporate marketing measures itself on long term brand equity or share of voice and divisional marketing on, you know, the next quarter’s pipeline and MQLs. So if they’re not both pulling in the same direction from a core positioning perspective, it can become really confusing for the customer.

Debbie Forster MBE:
But we often forget that, don’t we? So we may not see it from the customer’s viewpoint. How is it that the disconnect could show up for us?

Karen Guyer:
I think it shows up in lots of different ways. I mean, commercially, you know, a fragmented brand cannot defend itself on price and it, you know, you get back into that commoditized piece that were talking about before. I think operationally, you know, if the content and the media is duplicating, it’ expensive. And then strategically the brand cannot flex that in the way it needs to respond to market changes if it’s not joined up. And then finally, I suppose it’s all down to reputation, isn’t it? You know, customers just stop trusting that brand. You know, which version of am I dealing with today? If you’re not consistent and I think these large organizations that risk is real, but it’s not always visible.

Karen Guyer:
I think it only really shows up when you start to measure and look at the gap between share of voice against share of market. And that’s an uncomfortable gap. When you see how much growth has been left on the table, it becomes very apparent that it wasn’t joined up.

Debbie Forster MBE:
Okay, well, let’s flip it and think about it from a more positive standpoint. What does it look like when a business gets the alignment right, having one coherent story across the organization?

Karen Guyer:
When it’s right, the marketing behaves more like a system and less like a sort of a product portfolio. The same story gets told at corporate, divisional, regional across all those channels, you know, but with the right level of depth of message for each audience. So it’s consistent, but it’s tailored. You know, that buying encounter consistent language from website all the way through to sales. So it means that it doesn’t matter what entry point the customers come in at, the experience is the same. And that integrated approach is really important to campaign development because strategy through to activation, you know, whether that’s owned, earned or paid, can track all those customer touch points across the funnel and that visibility really helps on how the buyer is engaging with the content.

Karen Guyer:
And you can a b test it and adjust the campaigns in real time, which is very useful and makes the most of the client’s budget.

Debbie Forster MBE:
Fantastic. All right, well, let’s then take a step back because marketing is not in a vacuum and increasingly there’s pressure on marketing to prove its value at leadership level. Why is that particularly acute in the industrial and engineering led businesses?

Karen Guyer:
I think because a lot of these businesses are heritage brands, you know, and sales has historically been owned by that customer relationship. It’s been, you know, it’s been person to person and it’s still very much like that, but it has long sales cycles. But buying committees are broader now. There’s lots of stakeholders involved, you know, and there’s also distributors and channel partners that mediate those customer relationships. And we’re a long way away from getting away from trade shows as they take large amounts of investment. And I think industrial marketers historically haven’t built the reporting infrastructures to be able to capture the results. So you know, metrics on things like share of search or brand equity or mental availability even most aren’t tracking it to be able to justify it.

Debbie Forster MBE:
So this again is that shift, isn’t it? It’s not just the engineer talking to engineer. This is not sales working their magic while marketing sits on the bench. It’s both in there working together. But where do you see marketing teams going wrong when they’re trying to demonstrate that impact?

Karen Guyer:
I think as they focus on activity because the tracking’s not in place, they’re looking at numbers of campaigns that they’ve delivered, not the impact that the campaigns have served. So you know, it’s linking that activity to pipeline contribution, win rate, share of search. It’s really giving them the metrics to be able to justify the impact that they’re having. Because often without it, they over attribute to demand and under attribute to brand. So it makes every day all look like a paid search win which sort of overfunds the bottom of the funnel and starves the brand awareness investment at the top. And it’s the brand investment and that trust that’s earned them the seat at the meeting in the first place. So it’s about doing this top and bottom of the funnel.

Debbie Forster MBE:
It’s that system approach that you’re saying again it’s moving away from the binary of this or that, bringing it together. And I just keep hearing from you, the analytics, the metrics that we have to be driven by that use it as our proof point, as our guiding light, etc through that or we’re just going to get ourselves lost. Well, okay then what does good look like when marketing is genuinely contributing to the pipeline? Pricing, power, growth, et cetera.

Karen Guyer:
So it all pulls in one direction. So we’ve touched on metrics and that commercial story, you know, that pipeline contribution and win rates. But then there’s sales and marketing operating as a revenue generating function, you know, dashboards that the CFO and the CRO have visibility on, shared targets and accountability. But then it’s brand and demand, you know, that are both funded and proven, you know, brand investment recognized in that power of preference being memorable in market in that really strong creative and important hooks. And then demand investment for pipeline. You know, what are those call to actions that are really starting to make people engage and it’s those things working together.

Debbie Forster MBE:
Okay, all right, so then think about across industry and connectivity, what do businesses that successfully turn complex capability into market leadership do differently?

Karen Guyer:
I think they keep it simple. They pick a really credible position, you know, something they can, from a capability and an ambition perspective, stand behind and then they own it and they keep building on it. You know, if you look at Schneider Electric’s done it on sustainability and it’s leading the market. Hitachi Energy on an energy transition and then Salesforce on something like no software. It’s a big claim but they’ve kept going with it. So engineering and technology needs to support the vision, not the other way around. So it’s about having ambition and knowing that your capability can deliver against it. So it’s translating that capability into outcomes, organizing everything around that customer commercial challenge and then keeping that technical depth in there for the people that need it.

Karen Guyer:
And that’s why B2B is so important, because you’ve got to do the targeting at top level, but you’ve got to be able to know that technical knowledge as well.

Debbie Forster MBE:
Okay, well, you’ve laid it out really straightforward. Thanks. I really have enjoyed this and I think you’ve given me a lot of things to take away and to think about how to make that practically work. I love talking to guests about moving beyond looking at the right now and looking up at the horizon. Karen, when you look at the horizon, what is grabbing your interest?

Karen Guyer:
I mean, at the beginning when we started chatting, were talking about the changes that were happening in that buyer journey. I’m really interested to see how that audience targeting continues. I think, you know, it’s going to be changing all the time with the use of energetic AI and working on behalf of those customers to research and even negotiate purchases, which is going to be interesting. I think it’s an interesting challenge, especially for B2B Enterprise clients because. And their agencies, I suppose, as they’re actually, it’s like a category leadership opportunity, but it’s presented in the form of a content audit. And I think that’s really interesting to explore further.

Debbie Forster MBE:
And I think it is. We’re going to have to watch this conversation keeps changing, doesn’t it? It’s gone from engineer to these broader groups of people where the impact gets you in the room and the engineers close it. But as AI steps in, it’s agentic. It’s almost that B to agentic to get to the B2B to close those sorts of deals. So never stops moving.

Karen Guyer:
Yeah, it’s so much further than SEO. You know, it’s all about being found and it’s all going to come down to the content.

Debbie Forster MBE:
Okay. All right. And then I get to step back and ask you a question. As a human, I love hearing from all the different guests thinking about, what are you reading, what are you watching, what are you listening to that I can add to my list?

Karen Guyer:
Oh, well, I’m reading Megan Hunter’s new debut novel, The End. We Start From. I don’t know if you’ve read it.

Debbie Forster MBE:
I have heard about it, but I have not read it.

Karen Guyer:
It’s a kind of disaster movie. It’s a little bit artier than a disaster movie, but it’s a disaster movie and it’s about the vulnerability of new motherhood in a really unstable environment of a huge flood. And it’s just recently been made into a beautiful film with Jodie Comer and Benedict Cumberbatch.

Debbie Forster MBE:
Karen, this has been great. You’ve left me with lots to think about, lots to do, and a cracking book to take with me to read at the weekend. I really appreciate you joining us today.

Karen Guyer:
Oh, thank you for inviting me.

Debbie Forster MBE:
And that’s all for this episode of XTech XTRA. Don’t forget, you can also hear from more of the leading voices across the entire global tech community on the main XTech podcast. We’ll be back next time with more actionable advice from the minds at Fox Agency. Thanks for tuning in.

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