New Delhi: In today’s data-centric landscape, leveraging customer data for enhanced segmentation and personalized delivery is crucial. Striking a balance between utilizing anonymized and aggregated data for targeted outreach while respecting privacy is paramount. B2B marketers play a pivotal role in driving awareness, consideration, and demand, requiring seamless collaboration across functions like product marketing, content marketing, and field marketing. 

The evolving landscape also sees B2B marketers in India embracing Gen AI, with a focus on improving productivity and exploring advanced use cases in content generation, segmentation, and campaign optimization. As technology continues to advance, successful adoption of Gen AI will be key for organisations aiming to stay competitive in their marketing practices. In this regard, Priyanka Chakraborty, ObserveNow, interacted with Anurag Kubba, APAC Field Marketing Leader, Automation Business Unit, IBM.

Here are a few excerpts from the Interview:

In today’s data-driven world, how are you using your TG data to create better segmentation of profiles and to make sure of a hyper-personalised delivery, while cautiously not breaching privacy?

It’s important for organisations to ensure and respect user privacy. This is not just an ethical practice but also required as part of various compliance and regulations. The user must be aware of the organisation’s privacy policy, how the data will be used and should be aware of how to withdraw their consent at any time.

Considering these, organisations can responsibly use anonymized and aggregated data to segment their audience and have a targeted outreach through channels like Account Based Marketing, Channel Partners, and digital platforms. Personalized content, tailored emails with specific offers, surveys and feedback can help drive hyper personalised engagement.

As a B2B marketer today, what are your primary areas of focus- is it your consumer journey, content marketing or field marketing practices?

The B2B Marketer role may vary from organisation to organisation depending on specific goals, Industry etc but by and large I see them playing a key role in driving Awareness, Consideration and Demand for their product/service or solution. This journey of taking a prospect from Awareness to Demand requires close alignment between different marketing functions including Product Marketing, Content Marketing, and Field Marketing etc. In my view, it’s not an either or but a question of how well these functions are in sync and eventually helping the Business achieve its objectives. End of the day, the key is to have a holistic approach that aligns with the unique attributes of the target audience and goals of the organization.

In a tech world today- redefine the purpose of Field marketing specifically event marketing for us? How are you leveraging it to its true potential?

A Field Marketer is the face of marketing in a Geo or Country and is responsible for driving pipeline and helping Business achieve revenue objectives. This externally focused role is responsible for communicating with clients, sellers, Partners, analyst and media – collectively: “the field” and bringing in the voice of the client and market insight into the organisation.

For a Field Marketer, events (Physical or Virtual) play a very critical role. They are a great opportunity for organisations to build connections, engage with the audience through immersive experience that includes thoughtfully curated content, activations, showcasing innovative solutions and Demos’ to name a few. Events are a great place to “Show” (Product/Solution capability) vs “Tell” (talking about products). A successful event starts with getting the right audience, creating an engaging experience and followed by a robust lead management process.

How do you define a successful field marketing campaign? How does it contribute to lead generation and customer acquisition now?

A successful marketing campaign is defined by its ability to achieve key KPIs set for it. For field marketing campaigns in particular, it starts with getting the right audience to the events which can be measured by audience engagement and lead generation. In case of a virtual event, audience engagement can be measured by looking at things like participation in Q&A and Poll questions, average time spent etc. For F2F events, participation in sessions, engagement at demo booths and response to feedback forms (also applicable for virtual events) are some of the key indicators of engagement.

Audience when engaged appropriately turn into Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) which are then nurtured to Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) and finally win. Eventually, meeting the conversion targets (Registration vs Attendance in case of events, MQL to SQL and SQL to Win (Customer acquisition) defines a successful campaign.

How deep are B2B Marketeers in India into Gen AI? Can you share a snippet from your journey and a general observation prediction in your opinion on the same?

Gen AI has captured the imagination of one and all and B2B marketing is no exception. The initial use cases of Gen AI in general are focused on improving productivity and I see great potential for this within the marketing function. 2023 saw marketers starting to explore the power of AI tools to generate content but in 2024 I see this going mainstream with the advent of more AI tools and platforms leading to more sophisticated use cases.

With rapidly changing Tech landscape and the pace of innovation, Businesses will be under pressure to respond to market dynamics quickly and swiftly. This will have an impact on B2B marketers who will be expected to deliver campaigns quickly in a matter of days if not hours. In 2024 and beyond, I see Marketing leading the way around Gen AI adoption, expanding to more advanced use cases around segmentation, hyper personalisation, campaign optimization etc to name a few. Organisations that will succeed are the ones that will use the power of Gen AI effectively and ethically.