Episode Description
Join Matt as he uncovers the essence of creativity in B2B marketing campaigns, drawing parallels with NASCAR, NCAA, and the NFL. He navigates the complexities of channel marketing, shedding light on both its challenges and benefits. The conversation delves into the evolving landscape of tech marketing, highlighting the shift from traditional in-person events to digital and hybrid approaches. This episode also explores the importance of LinkedIn for professional growth and how hybrid work is shaping modern marketing strategies.
Key Takeaways:
- Creative B2B Marketing: Insight into inspiring campaigns and the significance of understanding market trends.
- NASCAR's Marketing Potential: Leveraging NASCAR for innovative strategies in B2B marketing.
- Channel Marketing Insight: Exploring its challenges and benefits, with a focus on relationship-building and resource allocation.
- Evolution of Tech Marketing: The transition from in-person to digital and hybrid models, emphasizing creativity and personalization.
- LinkedIn for Professional Growth: How LinkedIn enhances visibility and fosters professional connections in the B2B space.
- Hybrid Work as a Marketing Focus: The impact of hybrid work on future marketing strategies.
Tune in for a deep dive into the future of B2B marketing, packed with practical insights and creative strategies.
Summary:
Matt shares insights into the unique dynamics of partner and channel marketing, highlighting the emphasis on relationship-building over traditional demand generation tactics. He discusses the role of being a "business partner first, marketer second," and explains how channel teams work with CRMs and manual processes to track pipeline and ROI. Matt also touches on the creative balancing act of resource allocation and the need for strategic budgeting in channel marketing.
[Read the full transcript]
pharosIQ: Welcome, welcome, welcome to this week's episode of pharosIQ’s podcast, the podcast that is anything but boring. Um, each week we dive in, we talk to a B2B demand gen field channel, Rhodes marketer, talk a little bit about marketing, what's happening, what the trends are, and then most importantly, inspire you all with an idea.
Um, or multiple ideas from creative campaigns that have been executed in the past. Um, this week, we're really, really pumped to have Matt Windham, partner marketing manager at Cisco, 15 years of experience driving successful B2B field and channel marketing initiatives for large tech OEMs. The last five years, he's been working with Cisco channel partners, um, of all sizes, executing pipeline generating programs and just creating a ton of innovative ways to drive positive outcomes for them.
Ciao. He's also a dad, right? Seven and five year old kids and enjoys a NFL, NCAA and NASCAR. I can read, I can meet you on one of those three things. Maybe the NFL, but I lose you at the NCAA and NASCAR.
Matt: Makes sense. And, uh, it's been a tough year. I'm a Panthers fan from an NFL perspective. So Happy the season's over.
Transitioning into March Madness. I live down here in North Carolina, just south of RTP, so right in the middle of Duke, Carolina, NC State, Wake Forest happens to be my team, which is none of those and growing up in North Carolina, it's kind of attached to NASCAR. And I really think from a marketing perspective, there's some interesting opportunities and activations that we see there that I've kind of grown up.
It's more than just like in the sport, you get to see all the cool things that go along with it there that happened at the track and away from the track. So,
pharosIQ: well, being a Panthers fan and I'm a Bears fan, thanks for the number one pick. Appreciate it.
Matt: I just saw your shirt. I was like, oh, man,
pharosIQ: thank you for that.
For the one of the greatest trades ever to exist in and football history. Um, we'll take your best receiver and the number one pick for some stuff. So
Matt: most of it,
pharosIQ: yeah, we won't, we will just as bad. It's not going to work on that side. So awesome. So, you know, Matt, you're, you are, I believe just going to be our, our official 20th guest, right?
So, well, you know, kudos to that for being number 20, you know, there's an interesting stat out there that most podcasts don't make it to 20. They don't make it 98 percent of all podcasts. Don't make it to 20 episodes for, so thanks for being number 20 and for all, for all you out there. Thanks for listening to 20.
Um, you are also our first marketer, uh, from the channel partner side, right? So I'm going to spend a little time diving into that. Cause I know it's a very different ball game. It's a little bit different from some of the other parts of marketing. So let's talk about that, right? You've been doing it a long time.
How do you see, uh, partner or channel marketing field, you know, different from say a demand generation or a growth function?
Matt: Yeah, that's a great question. Thanks for having me, pharosIQ. Um, There are a couple of different ways that I see that it's different. And it's a really interesting dynamic working in the channel.
I will say that, um, we are responsible for driving pipeline. I have pipeline goals that I have to drive through my partner. So the end result is still the same as some of the more typical demand gen marketers, but
I've tried to find a creative way to describe what we do. And I've kind of
landed on a couple of things. Business development for marketing is one way that I describe it. Uh, another way, and I wish I would have thought about this, I can't take complete credit for it, but one of my leaders recently said this, and, uh, it's taking the mindset of business partner first and marketer second. So rather than trying to push those demands in programs, it's really about being that business partner first.
And once you are that business partner, it really opens a lot of doors. to that typical demand gen type role, where you can drive the outcomes that you're looking to from a pipeline and goalie perspective.
So definitely different, um, in the sense that I think it's more relationships first, marketing second.
Um, I like to see myself too, and my role is more of a connector of people. So if we think about that. I am, I'll speak to Cisco, broad portfolio, tons of products that fit within that portfolio. I'm not a master and expert in any of those, but it's more of connecting our internal resources that are experts.
back to our partners to help drive that deep level of knowledge that we need to execute some of the activities that we're doing. Uh, another piece of that connecting, which I think is interesting for the channel side is connecting our experts with their experts on the marketing side. Uh, so we meet regularly with our digital marketing team to discuss things that we've seen succeed and fail from a tech stack perspective or a strategy perspective and get the executive teams from partners in a room to talk about what they're doing.
Um, and ultimately that's not driving towards my pipeline goal, but eventually down the road that will help meet those goals. If we can help make those partners, better marketers. And oftentimes we connect those teams and our teams learn a lot from the partners and we can implement some of their strategies and execution into our plan.
So it's a, it's a really neat role. A little bit different, like you were saying, the typical demand gen, uh, growth marketer, but, um, I think just as relevant, just as important.
pharosIQ: A lot of general understanding is that a lot of, you know, partners or channel partners, you know, tend to be a little bit.
underfunded or under resourced from an internal marketing perspective, right? Because obviously they have, you know, so like, how do you battle, you know, the, you know, again, a great, a great marketing program is, you know, getting someone early in the funnel and then nurturing them. And, you know, like, and a lot of partners just don't have the resources or expertise to do that.
So how do you generally battle that when you're trying to create pipeline when you have that obstacle?
Matt: That is definitely an obstacle that we see, uh, working with various side, varying sizes of partners. It's like, it depends. I mean, some of them have massive marketing organizations with all the resources that they need to do things internally.
Some of them don't really have anything. Um, they have a handful of people that are trying to execute across multiple OEMs. Uh, so it's very difficult. Really the philosophy I take is understanding the needs of the partner and weighing those. against our needs and what we're trying to drive from, uh, from our standpoint.
And once we do that, once you can kind of understand the business by connecting that way, you can really hone in on specific areas that might, um, be less resources and resource intensive for those partners, um, back to the connecting theme. If there are agencies that you worked with or other people that you know, that can create things.
Um, we can connect those people to help alleviate some of those burdens there, but you're right. There are definitely some challenges there from a resource standpoint. Right. Um, from partners and we got to get creative to how to address those. Um,
pharosIQ: how do you, so you have a pipeline, right? Which. Some do some, which is, you know, not unique to the channel.
But, um, but you know, if I'm Marketer X, who's, you know, running a Core demand program or a growth team, I have my CRM right. And my sales reps great opportunities in it. And I connect my campaigns to those opportunities and I can see that ROI. Right. Do do, do channel teams have a CRM or how do you, how are you tracking that Pipeline?
Matt: Channel teams do have a CRM. Um. To be honest, right now, a lot of it's manual that we do to inspect it and make sure that it's right. So connecting The leads and the accounts back to deal IDs that we see in our, um, in our CRM and pulling that together. We have automated a lot of that just through some of our processes where we have to submit, um, leads from the campaigns that we've done.
And we're tying a lot of that together on the backend, but that is, I'd say from a measurement perspective and connecting those different tools to get a true picture of the exact ROI. Especially when you bring in things like attribution. Um, it's, it's, it's a challenge that we face, but I think we're doing the best that we can right now and we're always making improvements there.
pharosIQ: I've heard, I've heard like, you know, again, uh, incentivizing partners to give feedback on leads and, you know, building in those types of programs to get it all centralized. It's, I think it's a unique, a unique challenge. I think if there's a vendor out there who could solve for that concept, right? Like, you know, pipeline management across a channel network would be, that'd be a really cool play, I think it'd be a really cool product, writing it down right here on my side, like, how do you solve for that?
Let's see, it's, I hear it commonly in the space. Like we know we're sending people leads and we know some of them are doing stuff and it's good, but we just don't know how much and when and why and all of that part.
Matt: It is. Yeah. And like, like you said, that comes down also to like a resource and budgeting standpoint to implement a tool like that, to track, is it something that's worthwhile or should we use that investment to spend somewhere else to actually drive more demand?
So it's a creative balance. It's one that we have been challenged with. I think we're getting a whole lot better at it from where we've came along, um, or from where we came from, but there's still some work to be done there. And as much as we can do to integrate those systems to have that true number. Um, the thing that I find important with my partners is providing that number back because once we can show that ROI, start to see a lot of those numbers and the way that we're looking at it internally, even if it's, uh, it's that way, it's only going to help us later to go and make the ask for more funding and more resources to help support.
So it's something that we're really trying to solve for and something that we're trying to prove out just to show the value of what our partners are bringing to us.
pharosIQ: You, we talked a little bit about the challenges of channel marketing. Cause it's, it's, I would say it's a little bit more challenging. I just will just from talk, you know, like, but what do you think are the, uh, perks, right.
And upsides to working in the channel versus a standard demand role.
Matt: Yeah, I, uh, I personally love working in the channel and you've heard the analogy probably that everybody should work in the service industry just to get a feel for what that industry is like and to learn kind of the nuances there.
I'm of the opinion that everybody should work some way, shape or form in the channel. Uh, it gives you the opportunity to learn more about multiple businesses, multiple routes to market, multiple ways that these companies are, uh, Driving growth for themselves. And it really helps you understand the gaps that they might have.
It helps you become a more well rounded marketer and it helps you really understand where you can make an impact with these folks. Like I feel oftentimes I'm more of an employee for these partners sometimes than for Cisco. Uh, which is a good feeling to have, because I feel like I'm mutually invested in outcomes that benefit them as well as benefit us.
That is one thing that I definitely enjoy about the channel. I think just from an overall business acumen perspective, it's good to see how multiple companies operate and how multiple companies operate to come together to go reach a common goal. So it's pretty rewarding. And I think that's definitely an upside.
Um, I think there's a lot of flexibility to make an impact when you're on the channel side. Um, I get to do some creative things. I've been fortunate enough to have leadership. That's given me a little bit looser of a leash, but, uh, we talk about data all the time and everybody talks about data these days.
Um, but how can I provide insights that we're gathering from our side, whether it's engagement on a website, whether it's a addressable market install base, things like that, simplify it and boil it down, or we can take it to the field. So they can go drive activity within these accounts. We use a lot of this data to build out and target from a campaign standpoint, but there's just as much of a use for, to put that in the field's hands from a channel sales perspective.
And I've had the ability to do some innovative things around that and having the flexibility in the channel space where. I'd say in more of a typical demand gen or growth marketing, you don't have that flexibility to kind of think outside of the box as much. So, um, there's definitely huge benefits to, to working in a channel and I thoroughly enjoy it.
pharosIQ: So what trends are you seeing, uh, channel and channel field partners based over the past 12 to 18 months? What's happening?
Matt: Uh, 12 to 18 months. It's been an interesting timeframe. Um, and I'll probably go back a little bit more than 12 to 18 months because I've been in the same role throughout the whole COVID thing.
Uh, we had partners before events, events, events was all they did, right? That's where they spent their time was doing in person events. And all of that shut off, uh, for a very long time. And you had some partners who had never even experienced or tried digital marketing tactics. Um, so that represented a really good opportunity for us.
From an education standpoint, here's some things that you need to do. Uh, let's try this. We can't, we got to find different ways to get in front of customers because we're not meeting in person anymore. Um, so now we kind of built that up over the last thing. It went all digital and now things have opened back up again and it started to open back up the world of events again.
So we're seeing some interesting trends there, like from an event standpoint. It's harder to get people off their couch and out the door to an event these days. Uh, we had a CISO tell us recently, you know, you used to invite people to a suite to go to a ball game and it was all the rage or invite somebody to, uh, watch PowerPoint presentation and eat lunch and it would get them out of the office early.
So they'd be happy to come and do that now. But a CISO told us the other day, I'm a CISO, like I can buy my own tickets to a basketball game if I want to. Uh, I don't necessarily need to come and drink beer with you all. I'm gonna bring my son. So that that's just kind of an example of how we're having to think outside of the box to now that events are back, how to balance that digital portion with the events portion, but make some of these events more intimate and compelling to get people to actually show up and attend because it's really tough to get people's attention these days.
pharosIQ: Yeah, it's, I mean, it's, and it's just, it's, it's in all phases, you know, it's not, you know, things were low interest rates, a lot of people buying things, a lot of people investing in things, right? Twenty nine, 2018 to 2021 slash two was, you know, peak, right? So, you know, I don't want to say you didn't have to put a lot of effort in, but like you said, you throw a suite together.
Check, send a couple of emails out. You got 60 people there and 25 of those turn into pipeline. Right. But now, now it's, it's just tougher. Less people in market budgets are tougher to get. You're, you're fighting that status quo of, you know, IT and marketing and channel and all the decision makers that were like, Hey, wow.
Why am I going to go talk to this vendor when I know my budget's dead, right? Like, so I don't have the time to do it. So now it's really about, again, trying to really laser focus on who's in market to your best ability, or who has the highest propensity to buy. And then, you know, doing something creative that they're like, okay, I'll, that sounds fun.
I've never done that, you know? Um, so we, we recently did one at MRP for marketers. Where we brought like a group of decision makers, CFO, CISO, CIO, CEO, et cetera. And we did like a panel where marketers can ask them how they buy. So we got, you know, like just that little different approach of being able to talk to the buyer about their journey was a nice win.
So what, uh, what, uh, what micro events have you seen success with from a creativity standpoint that people have showed up and been excited for?
Matt: Yeah, we've definitely done some recently. Um, Things like private chef experiences and things like that, that would get people out of their house. Of course, you have all of your tastings and things like that, that have typically worked, but smaller intimate style events that are very, very targeted, uh, where all of our teams are aligned.
So that's another piece of the connection part on the channel is that we have to connect the channel teams with our teams to jointly agree to go target these prospects to drive them to these events. So they're really, really. honed in and aligned on the accounts that they want to focus on and the solution areas that they want to focus on.
So anything that's very, very small and intimate are the things that we've seen that have worked the best. We have invested in some trade shows and some of those things you have to show up at to, to, to be relevant. But now we're seeing the things that are intimate where our teams are aligned. Those are the things that are working the best.
pharosIQ: Yeah, you have, you know, you go to a big trade show and, you know, some of it's about the brand and, you know, you got to check some boxes, but for the most part, it's like people, people dodge the marketplace, like the plague, you know, like it's, I want to go to the sessions and it's, and, you know, you, you know, you're spending X hundreds of K dropping a booth in flying sellers and marketing people out to man the booth and doing the thing.
And it's like, oh, it's just painful. I absolutely agree that like small. Intimate, you know, those, those are where your wits are. Right. So we, we've kind of touched on a couple of great ideas already, but we've reached the pinnacle of the pod where we're talking on B to boring, you know, tell us about one of your most unboring campaigns over the years, Matt, and, you know, we'd love to learn a little bit more about it.
Matt: Yeah, definitely. Uh, one, this goes back a little ways, one pretty far, and then one, a little bit more recent, but. And one that I honestly have been fighting to bring back, but it's more of a mobile marketing type program. So we took vehicles and pack technology within these vehicles, drove them out to customer sites, let end users, decision makers, everybody else have hands on experience with this technology and learn from it.
Uh, and we saw some awesome results and engagement from that. Um, I did it one at Cisco and then one at another technology company. Uh, before that was actually my first job professional job with Cisco was driving this demo vehicle around. But when you have somebody that's in the pipeline and you can pull up all the technology that you're positioning to them, to their front doorstep, feed them lunch, and then have them walk through touch feel that really accelerated the sales cycle.
Um, you can park that thing anywhere. We can park it at huge sporting events and invite customers to that. So, um, The mobile marketing piece was something that I think should make a comeback. Um, from a budget standpoint, I know that it's a little expensive, but the returns that we were seeing from that and really just putting things in people's hands was something that will live with me forever and that I'll always advocate for.
Um, so that's, I guess, two of the unique programs that we've definitely worked
pharosIQ: on. But see, remember when CDW had that huge bus? They just drove that thing around everywhere. Like everyone just parked it, the big old CDW bus. I don't know what was in it. I never actually went in, but it was huge. Yeah,
Matt: it was huge.
Um, and Cisco has a larger program like that, but it's not as accessible to partners and it's not accessible to end users. You can't just pull that thing up right up to somebody's front door. So, uh, but yeah, um, I've seen a couple of vendors do that. I've seen some successful. No. Activations from that, not only that I've managed to have been a part of, but externally, like the CDW example, there are a couple others that are out there too.
But I think now is a prime time to make a comeback for that. Just because, uh, uh, people are starting to return to the office. People aren't wanting to go downtown to go to the events like we were talking about, bring it right to them, let them see it, uh, let them experience it, show the value and, um, accelerate the pipeline from there.
pharosIQ: It reminds me of like a combination of two ideas I've seen, right? So I've seen a lot of, especially technology companies marketing younger, right? Like starting to market to the young, you know, the next generation of buyers, right? Because they know that, you know, so, you know, have you ever seen those like mobile gaming birthday party thing?
Oh yeah. Like imagine if. Imagine if like you had like mobile gaming sponsored by Cisco, right. And you just drove around and people got to play the latest X game powered on Cisco tech and you know, like, could be, could be a cool idea, throwing it out there.
Matt: That's a good opportunity that I haven't necessarily thought about as more of a co marketing thing rather than just us managing everything yourself.
That's a really good idea. Thanks.
pharosIQ: Colleges and that, that younger crowd, you know, like connecting the, connecting the brands, technology brands to, you know, because again, those are your buyers two years, four years, eight years from now, they're going to be the CIOs and the VPs and that's, that's awesome.
They are. Yeah. What was your second?
Matt: My second one is one that we've done more recently, and we used a lot of traditional tactics from this. But we focused the campaign around hybrid work and hybrid work means so many things right now. I work from home all the time. I rarely make the drive up to the office these days.
But there's more of a push to return to the office. So we've got to hit all different audiences from folks who work from home, folks who are returning to the office. There's really compelling use cases to get people that, and we think about that from a Cisco technology standpoint, I mean, that's so many different products and solution sets that we sell into.
Um, what we started doing is building kind of a robust hub for what is hybrid work. So it broke out into. Not just a landing page, but a landing page and sub pages off of that that focused in on key solution areas. Um, we incorporated a line of business buyers into this campaign rather than just your IT decision makers.
When you think about marketing, there's a lot of people who are trying to figure out how to manage their apps efficiently in a distributed environment. When you think about reality, um, uh, Realtors are facilities and real estate buyers. They're looking to actually furnish these buildings with technology that's going to make it more attractive for people to come in.
So we have different audience tracks other than just the I. T. Buyer that we incorporated into this as well. Um, as a part of that hub, we also built out a robust enablement portion. So internal sellers from a partner. To go and get all of their enablement materials from our hybrid work hub, if you will. Um, so it started with that.
We created a lot of content, thought leadership articles. We have a lot of big names that we can kind of pull into that are really appealing and people like to, um, consume content coming from them, get their, uh, perspectives from a leadership standpoint. So we created a lot of videos that were focused on those scenarios too.
So within our traditional advertising. I paid advertising strategies to drive people back to this hub. We would retarget them with one of these gated assets that was focused with one of these executive leaders. So the goal of the campaign really was to convert anonymous traffic to known traffic on the partner's website.
And by retargeting and gating that content, we were able to pull in those users so we could start to market and work them through our nurture streams. Now that we converted them to known users. Uh, we also use content syndication as part of that good old fashioned content syndication, targeting those lines of buyers, targeting the I.
- buyers that we could then work back through our funnel. So it's really a combination of content creation, more of your traditional paid advertising, um, content syndication, if you will, uh, gating that content all to get those converted. Users from anonymous to known. And we've seen a lot of success. Some of the sales cycles are long for these.
So we're not seeing all of the results that we're expecting to see out of it. Um, but from a conversion standpoint, we're absolutely pleased with the numbers that we've gotten back so far.
pharosIQ: Really good stuff. I love the concept. I love. Use case marketing becomes, I feel like it's, you know, it's, it's really attacking the why and not the want, right.
Instead of someone saying, you know, I, I need X server or I need this collaboration software. Are you really attacking? Like, what are you trying to do? Right. Okay. You're trying to solve for hybrid work. Awesome. Here's how we can help you do that. I think that's really a great direction. And again, especially at hardware, you know, it's, it's so, it's so technical, right?
There's so many specs. There's so many, like all the different firewall variables, right? You could just get lost in the trenches at the end of the day. You know, a CEO isn't going to understand the intricacies of a firewall. They're going to say, did we solve for hybrid work guys? And then the answer is yes.
That that's your check box, you know?
Matt: Absolutely. Yeah. And like you were saying, outcomes rather than point products is something that we really tried to focus on, especially. When you're tying together multiple technologies to solve that challenge. Like that's a fun part of it. It's trying to tell that story and creating that story.
So that's a really cool aspect of it. Um, but you're absolutely right. I mean, there's so many point products out in the market right now, people don't necessarily always care about how it all works together on the backend. They just recognize optimization, cost savings, getting my employees to use this real estate that we have sitting here, um, and proving my customer's experience.
So what's under the hood comes later, but you got to get them hooked first to start to understand and to drill down what's under the hood.
pharosIQ: Well, Matt, well, thanks for joining us. It's been awesome. Um, You know, I really enjoyed diving into the channel side of the fence for our, for our listeners. It's again, first time we've done that.
Thanks for being number 20, um, from a podcast perspective. Appreciate you on that side. Um, where can folks find you, uh, for reaching out?
Matt: LinkedIn is the place where I primarily hang out. Um, I definitely spent a lot of time on there just reading, consuming. That's actually how we came across one another. Uh, I think you actually reached out to me and I was really intrigued by a lot of the ways that you responded and engaged with folks.
So I really enjoyed it. So I'm glad that we connected. That's actually what led to the podcast today. Um, but yeah, LinkedIn is mainly where I hang out. Um, starting to burn out on some of the other forms of social media, just with all the mess and noise that's out there these days, but definitely be found there.
pharosIQ: Cool. Well, awesome. Hit Matt up on, uh, social media, hit Cisco up, right? Obviously for your it and technology needs, right? For those of you out there who may be looking to solve some of those challenges as well.
If you're listening to us on your favorite podcast channel, station, platform, whatever we're calling it these days, uh, make sure to give us a like, um, give us a share. Right. Give us an a thumbs up or a five stars, all those things help beat a boring show up, um, in, in those B2B marketing searches for folks.
And we appreciate all of our listeners. So share us on social. Um, we appreciate Matt for joining us today and we look forward to chatting with everybody in the next couple of weeks, Matt, thank you again.
Matt: Yeah. Thanks pharosIQ. For having me. Uh, thanks for having me. This is great.
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