The Beat: Tomorrow People

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, a 3xCMO, trusted advisor, strategy consultant and Chief Bottle Washer at Rockstar CMO. In this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of what’s caught my eye from our community, our podcast and our street knowledge blog.

Hello!

Hope you’ve had a great week!

On the podcast this week, we took a poke around some research from Dreamdata, a customer data analytics vendor that looked at how much of the B2B marketing you are doing today impacts revenue over the short, medium and long term.

I know it’s good practice to repurpose content; however, I won’t repeat our discussion here (and if you listened, thank you!). But I will repeat some stats that popped out for me if you consider the marketing you are doing right now:

• Only 37% of revenue will be impacted within a quarter

• It takes six months for 50% of revenue to be impacted

• 25% of the revenue affected by marketing today will come after a year

Usually, when we think of the long and short of B2B Marketing (to coin a phrase from Les Binet and Peter Field’s highly influential IPA report, ‘The Long and the Short of It’), we are thinking of brand marketing, or at least that’s what I rant about, that we pay so little attention to brand marketing in B2B compared to short term demand generation.

Binet and Field suggest it should be a 60/40 split, with long-term brand building taking the more significant chunk of our resources, but how many of us get anywhere near that?

Brand building and long-term content marketing build trust, and much as we might deny it, B2B buying is an emotional business, partially driven by a FOFU (Fear of F’ing Up).

I recently heard Ian Bruce at Forrester talking about trust on the “What It Means” Forrester podcast, and he shares this in an article on the Forrester blog, which is rather deliciously called “Are B2B Buyers Cowards?”

And he continues with some advice for us B2B marketers:

Yes, I’ve dived down a trust rabbit hole here, and if you're a regular, you’ll know my view that the role of marketing is to create ART, Awareness, Revenue, and Trust. I think the ‘T’ is the more challenging to focus on and quantify, so I love the work Ian Bruce is doing, and trust isn't something you can build in a quarter.

To return to the Dreamdata report, which, to caveat, of course, is from a vendor and probably wouldn’t stand up to the rigour of an academic marketing study, but what struck me this morning writing this is, is that it doesn't matter if you are purposeful about having a “Long and Short of It” strategy, it’s happening anyway.

While our campaign plans, resources and demand-generation investments might point to a short-term revenue-focused marketing strategy, whether we like it or not, 25-50% of that will impact revenue in the medium to long term, regardless of our strategy.

So, maybe we should be purposeful about that. And not do long-term by accident, but know that the buyer is driving this long/short engagement.

That’s my thought for this newsletter and leads me to today's tune and the subject line for this email, Tomorrow People from Ziggy Marley, as a big chunk of our marketing today is a gift for ourselves tomorrow (or in a year's time) as it will reveal the Tomorrow People.

Until next week, cheers!

Ian

Ian Truscott | Chief Bottle Washer Rockstar CMO

I am still trying to get the Threads habit, and I would love to connect with you there - https://www.threads.net/@iantruscott

Street Knowledge

The good stuff from Rockstar CMO, our community and other stuff I’ve liked:

Around the interwebs…

From the Rockstar CMO community..

A must listen…

Get your Monday Marketing Mojo Working

With the Bob Marley movie coming soon, something from one of his boys, Tomorrow People, or the prospective buyers who are the future gift to ourselves.