Elevate your marketing strategies and dive into the world of generative AI at our latest Smarter Marketer panel event. Whether you’re grappling with how to harness the potential of AI to drive business growth or seeking actionable tips on how to integrate AI into your marketing efforts, our event covers it all.
Our exclusive panel discussion simplifies the complexities of AI’s challenges and guides you towards pragmatic solutions that work for your organisation. Witness first-hand the positive impact generative AI is already having on marketing strategies and outputs.
Our Smarter Marketer panel event delves into:
Generative AI tools unveiled: How AI is revolutionising content creation strategies.
AI in action: Implementing AI for maximum effectiveness.
Testing and adoption incubation: Implementing and testing AI tools.
Operational excellence: Vital considerations for governance in your marketing operations.
Risk management: Identifying, assessing and mitigating risks.
Missed the session, watch it on demand!
Unlock the AI advantage – activating AI
Ready to embark on your AI journey? Our tools and use cases for marketers resource is a great place to start – download yours today.
Meet the speakers
Mark Breslin
Chief Product & Technology Officer, Informa Tech
Mark is responsible for leading the Product & Technology at Informa Tech. This team focuses on working with the leadership teams across the business to shape and create product strategies and roadmaps for new and existing products and services.
Kate Cox
CMO, Bright Bid
Kate is an experienced CMO with a focus on marketing for the digital age and is a native AI marketer in her current role at Bright Bid, an adtech company using AI and human expertise to improve the effectiveness of paid digital activity
Zoe Merchant
Zoë is an agile marketing aficionado — a passionate believer in staying ahead of the competition with resilience, adaptability, and pace. After 20 years of delivering B2B marketing strategies, Zoë founded Bright to help tech, engineering and consulting firms get the most from their marketing investment. Using agile marketing to test, learn and build on success. Zoë leads the team in delivering results through continual and focused improvements to support clients’ business goals.
Interested in reading more about the capabilities of AI in marketing?
Embrace the rapidly evolving business landscape with the adoption of agile marketing. Discover the transformative potential it holds for B2B organisations by gaining valuable insights from industry-leading marketing experts who have successfully implemented agile practices within their departments.
This exclusive panel delves into the fascinating journeys, challenges and strategies of these marketing pioneers as they transitioned to an agile way of working. Learn first-hand how agile marketing has revolutionised their teams and discover the benefits it can bring your team and organisation.
Our Smarter Marketer panel event delves into;
Agile Marketing Foundations: Core principles in B2B environments.
Building Agile Teams: Mindset, training, and nurturing adaptability.
Establishing Agile Processes: Flexible workflows and communication tools.
Navigating Challenges: Real-world examples and overcoming strategies.
Measuring Success: Key performance indicators for continuous improvement.
Agile Marketing in Action: Case studies from various B2B industries.
Missed the session, watch it on demand!
Access the reframe cards – Activating Agile Marketing edition
Start activating agile marketing with our reframe cards – purposely created to help you and your teams improve your approach to agile marketing, with tips on how to restructure your thinking.
Meet the speakers
Catharina Rozendaal
Catharina Rozendaal is a results-driven marketing leader with a focus on driving growth. As the Marketing Growth Director for Emerging Markets at ADP, she combines her strategic expertise and deep understanding of market dynamics to execute impactful marketing campaigns.
Emily Nicols
Emily Nicols is a seasoned marketing professional with a passion for driving growth and creating impactful campaigns. As Group Marketing Director at Informa Markets, Emily has successfully implemented comprehensive marketing plans that have consistently delivered measurable results.
Sian Heaphy
Sian uses agile methods to encourage creativity, curiosity, and data-driven decisions in marketing. She works with teams to design experiments, gain insights, and achieve business goals. Sian promotes continuous improvement through experimentation and learning.
Lydia Kirby
Lydia Kirby is a marketing transformation director with over nine years of experience in the agile marketing methodology. She has worked with B2B tech, consulting, and professional services companies to help them use data and creativity to transform their marketing whilst delivering business outcomes. Lydia is passionate about showing tangible value for marketing and finding creative solutions to business problems.
Reading List
Watched the panel and interested in hearing more? Check out our extended list of agile marketing resources:
Blogs:
5 popular myths of agile marketing A 5-minute read that dispels myths on agile marketing and how theory comes to life and the true practicalities of agile ways of working.
Getting started with agile marketing A blog that shares practical tips to adopt agile ways of working in a marketing organisation and how to start on the right foot.
Books:
Hacking Marketing by Scott Brinker A great book that explores how applying software-inspired management concepts can accelerate modern marketing. Giving insight into how greater agility can improve customer experience.
Agile Marketing by Neil Perkin This book dives into adaptive marketing principles and practices, providing guidelines to redesigning marketing structures, processes and culture, to be fit for purpose in today’s changeable environment.
The 6 disciplines of Agile Marketing by Jim Ewel An informative read that provides a concise, approachable, and adaptable strategy for the implementation of Agile in virtually any marketing organization.
Other resources:
Agile Marketing Manifesto An online resources created by marketers to codify agile marketing and create a manifesto for the industry to utilise and reference.
Are you encountering resistance when going through business change and transformation? Perhaps you’ve started on your transformation journey and are encountering confusion or stagnation. We’ve seen it first hand, and that’s why we’re excited to present our exclusive on-demand content for the Smarter Marketer panel event.
Our panel brought together the brightest and best minds in the industry to dive into the world of change enablement and how you can bring your team on the journey to realise the power of change enablement.
We want to give you as marketers the power to do great work – check out our Smarter Marketer Event on change enablement; a 45 min panel discussion featuring the savviest marketers in B2B and can share their secrets behind seamless transitions, how to cultivate adaptability whilst boosting productivity and team morale.
Missed the session, watch it on demand!
Access the reframe cards – empowering transformation edition
Get started with change enablement with our reframe cards – purposely created to help you and your teams cultivate adaptability, and boost productivity, morale, and engagement in your change and transformation programmes.
Meet the speakers
Nick Sunderland
Nick, Director of Programmes at Boots, is an experienced leader who recognises the importance of change enablement in driving effective transformation. With an MBA focused on strategy from Edinburgh University, Nick is a skilled business development professional who brings valuable knowledge and experience to the table. We look forward to gaining insights from his expertise on change enablement.
Lucia Adams
Meet Lucia, an experienced transformation leader, consultant and coach. Lucia has over 25 years’ experience in companies such as: Bauer Media Group, The Times and Sunday Times as well as running her own consulting business supporting a wide variety of businesses and sectors.
Alex Jefferies
Alex is a change enablement expert with over a decade of experience in communications, culture, and change. Their passion lies in creating impactful and timely content and communications that drive positive change.
Zoe Merchant
Zoë is an agile marketing aficionado — a passionate believer in staying ahead of the competition with resilience, adaptability, and pace. After 20 years of delivering B2B marketing strategies, Zoë founded Bright to help tech, engineering and consulting firms get the most from their marketing investment. Using agile marketing to test, learn and build on success. Zoë leads the team in delivering results through continual and focused improvements to support clients’ business goals.
Reading List
Watched the panel and interested in hearing more? Check out our extended list of design thinking in marketing resources:
Books:
Atomic Habits by James Clear A great book that highlights how small changes can grow into such life-altering outcomes, uncovering simple hacks that have a revolutionary effect.
Make Change Happen by Ian Coyne This book delves into the secrets of successful, well-managed change, from ideas to implementation.
Switch by Chip and Dan Heath A great book focusing on change and why we insist on seeing the obstacles rather than the goal.
Contagious Culture by Anese Cavanaugh A great read that focuses on improving your leadership presence, setting yourself up for success and creating a space to share your vision.
Leading Change by Kotter This book focuses on the 8-step process that every company must go through to achieve its goal.
Articles, podcasts, and videos:
Think Fast, Talk Smart by Stanford Business Join Matt Abrahams, lecturer in strategic communication, as he sits down with experts from across campus to discuss public speaking anxiety, speaking off the cuff, nailing a Q&A, and more.
Are you feeling like your marketing strategies are stuck in a rut? Do you find yourself using the same tactics time and time again, only to see underwhelming results? We know the feeling, and that’s why we’re excited to present our exclusive on-demand content for the Smarter Marketer panel event.
Our panel brought together the brightest and best minds in the industry to explore what experimentation means to them, how they’ve used experimentation to enhance marketing activity and how this can help improve the ROI of marketing efforts.
We want to give you as marketers the power to do great work – check out our Smarter Marketer Event on experimentation; a 45 min panel discussion featuring the savviest marketers in B2B and can help provide inspiration, the pitfalls to avoid, and how to harness experimentation to take your marketing efforts to the next level.
Missed the session, watch it on demand!
Access the reframe cards – experimentation edition
Download our experimentation reframe cards – purposely created to help you and your teams experiment more, challenge assumptions, improve marketing effectiveness and ROI.
Meet the speakers
Lydia Kirby
Lydia is passionate about using experimentation to demonstrate the measurable impact of marketing strategies and finding innovative solutions to business challenges. She enjoys collaborating closely with clients and leveraging agile marketing methodologies to rapidly test and iterate on ideas.
Sian Heaphy
Sian uses agile methods to encourage creativity, curiosity, and data-driven decisions in marketing. She works with teams to design experiments, gain insights, and achieve business goals. Sian promotes continuous improvement through experimentation and learning.
Harriet Durnford-Smith
As the CMO at Adverity, Harriet is a seasoned marketing leader who understands the importance of experimentation in building effective customer-centric strategies. With her extensive experience, she oversees all aspects of the company’s marketing operations, driving her team to test new ideas and approaches in pursuit of meaningful growth.
Rosalind Hill
Rosalind is a strategic marketer who uses experimentation to make data-driven decisions and deliver exceptional customer experiences. Passionate about customer-centric strategies, Rosalind uses experimentation to identify new opportunities, craft engaging content, and optimise campaigns to drive business growth.
Reading List
Watched the panel and interested in hearing more? Check out our extended list of experimentation in marketing resources:
Be more curious, creative, and inject innovation. All things as marketers we’ve constantly been told to do bring to our thinking as we address the challenges of a highly competitive market. Great advice, but how do you actually do it?
We chat to Victoria Hardiment (Marketing Director, Informa Markets) and Neil Preddy (Customer Strategy & Planning Expert) and they reveal how leading marketing teams are using design thinking to inject innovative action into marketing activity.
We want to give you as marketers the power to do great work – check out our Smarter Marketer Event on design thinking; a 40 min panel discussion featuring the savviest marketers in B2B and can help you discover how you can take your marketing to the next level.
Missed the session, watch it on demand!
Access the reframe cards – design thinking edition
Get started with design thinking with our reframe cards – purposely created to help you and your teams utilise design thinking tools and frameworks to better understand your customers, improve team collaboration and optimise marketing effectiveness.
Meet the speakers
Sian Heaphy
Sian uses agile ways of working to help businesses be more creative, curious and use data to transform their marketing and deliver business outcomes.
Lydia Kirby
Lydia is passionate about showing tangible value for marketing and finding creative solutions to business problems. She loves working in partnership with clients and sharing learnings from her work with agile marketing methodology.
Victoria Hardiment
Victoria is an experienced marketer who oversees the marketing strategy and operations of Informa Markets as their marketing director. She has incorporated design thinking into her impressive career, putting the focus on the customer to inform her decisions.
Neil Preddy
Using data to solve problems, find opportunities and make better decisions, Neil is a product leader and marketer with global experience of building analytics and big data platforms for CPG companies and retailers like Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Tesco and Amazon.
Reading List
Watched the panel and interested in hearing more? Check out our extended list of design thinking in marketing resources:
Books:
The Design Thinking Playbook by Michael Lewrick and Patrick Link – This book offers a step-by-step guide to applying design thinking to solve complex problems in marketing and other areas of business.
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries – This book is a classic on how to apply the principles of lean startup methodology to create and launch successful products or services.
Value Proposition Design by Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Gregory Bernarda, Alan Smith – This book offers a practical guide to creating compelling value propositions using design thinking so they resonate with customers and drive business growth.
The Design Thinking Toolbox by Michael Lewrick, Patrick Link, Larry J. Leifer – This book offers a comprehensive set of design thinking tools and techniques for solving business problems, including marketing challenges.
Alchemy: The Magic of Original Thinking in a World of Mind-Numbing Conformity by Rory Sutherland – a recommendation from panelist Neil Preddy, discover the alchemy behind original thinking, as TED Talk superstar and Ogilvy advertising legend Rory Sutherland reveals why abandoning logic and casting aside rationality is the best way to solve any problem.
Design Thinking 101 hosted by Dawan Stanford – This podcast series features interviews with design thinking experts and practitioners, offering insights and best practices for applying design thinking in various contexts, including marketing.
Design Together hosted by Abby Guido – This podcast series focuses on how design thinking can be applied to solve complex problems in business, including marketing challenges.
Do your team dwell on failures, focus on what hasn’t worked and repeat the same mistakes? Then this panel discussion is for you!
Many organisations promote a fixed mindset amongst their employees without knowing they do so. This frame of mind makes teams reluctant to change and dwell on ‘failure’ rather than taking learnings and pushing forward in a clear direction.
As markets continue to evolve and change, it’s critical that your employees adopt a growth mindset. This way of thinking encourages your team to find solutions, learn from their marketing activity and enables them to keep pace with the market.
Encouraging employees in your organisation to make this psychological switch can help generate impactful business outcomes and drive greater marketing effectiveness, which is now more important than ever.
All the resources from our Growth Mindset discussion in once place!
Watch the panel discussion
Grab a copy of our Reframe cards
Check out the reading list
How do you cultivate a growth mindset?
We invited marketing leaders to join our panel to share their thoughts on how cultivating a growth mindset can help empower marketing adaptability in a changing market. Our People and Account Director, Alexandra Jeffries spoke with:
Pippa Van Praagh, Product Strategy & Enablement Director at Reward Gateway
Emily Clark, Head of Data Partnerships at Informa
Zoe Merchant, Managing Director at Bright
During the panel, they unpacked how to navigate continually changing markets and how to push forward as a business, they also shared their key strategies for cultivating a growth mindset and fostering curiosity amongst their team.
Meet the speakers
Alex Jefferies
With over a decade of communications, culture, and change experience, Alex is passionate about delivering impactful, timely and considered content and communications that drive positive change.
Zoe Merchant
Zoe is a passionate believer in staying ahead of the competition with resilience, adaptability, and curiosity. Zoe’s extensive agile marketing knowledge means she can turn every challenge into an opportunity.
Emily Clark
Emily has bridged the divide between marketing and data transformation since 2018, translating and facilitating change management in a multi-national, multi-brand organisation.
Pippa Van Praagh
Pippa’s passion is helping businesses build products and solutions that truly change behaviour and developing a growth mindset is just the start.
It’s not just a buzzword – defining what agile marketing is, what it means for B2B and why it works.
This is the era of Agile. The ascendancy of experimentation and strategic thinking. The reign of data-driven insights. No matter your industry, everyone seems to be ‘going Agile’. Truth is, following the tech and internet revolution and the rise of Silicon Valley, every industry has had to shift to a more tech and data-driven mindset. And marketers are no different, what with our constant need to be customer centric at the forefront of market change.
But what does it actually mean to be agile in the B2B marketing industry? How do you apply an agile approach to your marketing? Most importantly, why would you leave your proven, traditional marketing techniques behind for new ways of working?
Breaking it down
To put it simply, agile marketing is exactly what it sounds like – the application of agile methodology across your marketing. However, that doesn’t give us enough to apply it effectively. In fact, you need to consider your organisational goals and how to drive the change in behaviour that’s needed for embedding a new way of working with your people, process and technology. Agile has a lot of its own lingo, so let’s take a deeper look at the key terms you’ve probably come across, and how they all work together to form an agile marketing approach.
The Basics
Agile Methodology
In 2001, visionary software developers wrote the Agile Manifesto, highlighting the vital importance of discovery and experimentation in software development. To help others build better, more customer-centric products, they detailed the need for “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation and responding to change over following a plan.”
Agile ways of working
Adopting an agile mindset demands redefining your marketing operational model. Where traditional marketing is restrictive, agile emphasises the freedom to be daring in your concept creation and tactics. Rather than spending months planning a solid campaign strategy, an agile marketing team takes a minimum viable approach to take an idea to market as fast as possible in order to test it with the target audience. This of course requires greater collaboration and more effective communication across teams. Don’t worry though, the hard work pays off in the end – with a noticeable boost in efficiency and productivity.
Data vs. insights
We could write an entire book on the importance of being data driven. In short, there’s a clear difference between simply gathering data about your target audience and using that data to your advantage. The most important aspect of an agile marketing approach is to turn your data into actionable insights – really dig deep into who your audience is and what solution they need, to help you build marketing strategies that make an impact.
Sprints
Having adopted agile ways of working, your marketing team will start running campaigns in short bursts – usually within two or three-week intervals called ‘Sprints’. In Sprint 0, you’ll set up data tools to continually gather insights, and create content needed for the campaign. In Sprint 1, you’ll send it all out and test it with a specific section of your audience – say, your followers on LinkedIn. Then, in Sprint 2, you’ll take what you learnt in Sprint 1, iterate, and test again. And so on and so forth.
The Process
Test
So, how do you test, learn and iterate the agile way? By taking your concept to market as fast as possible, you’ll gain valuable time for measuring its effectiveness with your target audience. Did anyone click on your ad? How many responded to your emails?Did you receive any negative feedback about your content or design?
Retrospective
At the end of each sprint, you’ll take a hard look at those actionable insights. Taking note of what worked best with your audience and what failed to impress will help you gain a better understanding of your customers’ needs and what you need to do to reach them in the next Sprint.
Iterate
If you’ve learnt that your concept is working – great! Keep going and expand it to a wider audience. If it isn’t, change it up with a new image, subject line, USP, etc. In this iteration phase, you’ll make all improvements needed to get the results you want in the next Sprint.
This is an infinite cycle of continual testing, learning and improving that you can use throughout your campaigns and projects.
The Benefits
Agility
It’s clear that an agile marketing team is more efficient, effective and empowered. With an agile mindset, your marketing team will work more collaboratively to produce and experiment with new ideas that are more daring and innovative. What’s more, they’ll gain the skills to spring into action when needed, ready to adapt their campaigns and strategies accordingly.
Keeping Pace
Injecting agility into your marketing, is the key to keeping pace – or keeping up- with constant change in the market and the ever-changing demands of your customers. Without a doubt, this is one of the best benefits to adopting an agile marketing approach – the ability to accurately identify and take advantage of opportunities in the market for business growth and brand development.
Fit for purpose
With an agile marketing approach, you’ll see better results and improved performance. What’s more, it’ll become fit for purpose – perfectly aligned with your business goals.
The Future is Agile
There you have it, a clear breakdown of what it means for B2B marketing to be agile. As our world continues to become more digital and tech-focused, the agile approach will continue to evolve with the market, steadily gaining momentum in its influence. Adopting agile marketing and data-driven ways of working will become essential to success in B2B marketing.
Want to learn more? Check back next week for detailed look on Getting Started with Agile Marketing!
What is Agile Marketing?
This is the era of agile marketing. The ascendancy of experimentation and strategic thinking. The reign of data-driven insights. But what does that mean for B2B marketing?
