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On Target 2015 B2B marketing conference

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3 Sep 2015 | by Ian Blake

Organised by Vendemore, the conference takes in everything from account based marketing to the latest trends and best practices in the world of Inbound.

On Target 2015 B2B Marketing Conference

Being on target is pretty much a foundation stone of Inbound and Content Marketing, so it comes as no surprise that I currently find myself in the beautiful surrounds of the Fotografiska Museum in Stockholm at On Target 2015, an inspiring conference for B2B sales and marketing professionals. Organised by Vendemore, the conference takes in everything from account based marketing to the latest trends and best practices in the world of Inbound.

On Target 2015 is aimed at B2B marketers looking for cutting edge information on account based marketing, content marketing and marketing automation. For those who couldn’t make the conference this year, I’d thought I’d pass on a quick summary of the main speakers -

First up was Julian Archer of Sirius Decisions.

Julian spoke of frameworks and models, from their demand waterfall to their Pipeline Acceleration Framework, where he focused on sales and marketing alignment.

One of the key take aways for me is to apply different tactics at different stages of the funnel. It’s something we fully endorse at Squaredot as we see the results firsthand. He discussed Rapid Entry, Intra Pipeline and Last Mile tactics that could be applied to support sales at those stages of the funnel.

Next up was Ryan Ball of Hubspot

Ryan’s talk was typically energetic and fascinating as he demonstrated Hubspot’s common sense approach to marketing, emphasising the importance of engaging, social conversations. For too long we have been marketing to the crowd but marketing is more effective when we market as much as possible to an individual.

Here’s a few other insights and stats that Ryan pointed out:

  • You’re more likely to be hit by lightning then click on a non targeted face book ad, and LinkedIn isn’t much better.
  • Lawyers are more loveable than marketers.
  • Personalised websites have a 55% higher conversion rate than non personalised ones.

Other key take aways for me was that you can never gather enough information on your target persona and of course you must personalise all communications.

Next up was Christopher Engman of Vendemore.

Christopher gave an impassioned and informative talk on Account Based Marketing, which is an area relatively new to me. It’s an exciting growth area and one I plan on exploring. Essentially it enables companies to target specific accounts with their content. It’s perfect for companies selling large deals to organisations that have multiple decision makers. And particularly effective where large B2B enterprise sales organisations generate 80% of their revenue from their top 20% accounts. As you can imagine, it’s a perfect tool for account acquisitions, account growth accelerating cross selling and retention.

Christopher had a very interesting insight that I have to agree with, and it’s that only 10% of key account/global account sales people are good at the political part of their job, relationship building at many levels across the organisation. Account Based Marketing is a targeted marketing solution that creates brand awareness in these accounts filling the awareness gap that may be left by 90% of sales people.

Last up to the podium were Anne Arneby & Rikard Candell of Bisnode.

Anne & Rikard uncovered fascinating insights into data and how it is exploding in size and complexity.

Smart data is about using the data to help us in our every day lives, like booking an Uber or Hailo taxi. Every time you use these services, they learn a little about you and further personalise and enhance your experience going forward.

All in all, On Target 2015 was a fascinating, engaging, educating and empowering experience for me, which pretty much summarises the principles behind Inbound Marketing in general.

If you want to be more 'on target' with your marketing communications, but are finding the world of Inbound a step into the unknown, then download the free "Intro to Inbound" eBook.

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