PeakActivity spent some time yesterday with some of South Florida’s preeminent marketers at the Modern Marketing Mashup (#MMMashup). The event was sponsored by Oracle Marketing Cloud (@OracleMktgCloud) and consisted of 4 panelists along with a moderator. A big thanks to @triblio and @DefintvResults for participating in the event.
There was great representation from companies of all sizes throughout the greater Miami area. Several topics were discussed, heavily focused on marketing technology, data analytics, and content generation — all with a B2B angle to them.
Here are our top 3 trend observations:
1. B2B DEMAND GENERATION IS JUST GETTING STARTED.
Companies are still in their infancy in purchasing & using marketing automation software. As growth continues, expect a large number of companies to shift from traditional outbound sales to more complex multi-dimensional demand generation strategies.
2. ANALYTICS AND INSIGHTS NEED MORE THAN JUST EXCEL.
The importance of data analytics is very well understood, but rich tools are still not quite there. There is still a large amount of Excel-based data export and analysis being done. Unfortunately this can be a very expensive proposition, both from a resource and opportunity cost standpoint. A trend for more progressive and modern B2B companies will be to move quickly to adopt web and mobile-based tools that eliminate the need to pass around Excel files. The cost savings in resources and gains in efficiency are certainly there to be had, and the more progressive companies will exploit these to their advantage.
3. QUALITY CONTENT IS STILL KING, BUT MAKE IT RELEVANT.
With the personalization capabilities of many marketing automation platforms improving rapidly, relevancy analysis on your content will be key. Being able to segment and tag the right audience for the content that you’re creating will be an art that will separate the better marketers from the rest of the pack.