Key Takeaways

Clients are more demanding of proven results

Marketers are demanding shared ownership of client success, and tangible ROI from media and events firms more than ever before. A marketing services model gives clients more bang for their buck. Utilise enhanced technology platforms that bring together relevant, multichannel data to give clients the success they need. By delivering more than just the lead and the email address, indications of purchase propensity, engagement scores, and nurturing services, an entrepreneur can differentiate themselves from the competition and command higher prices.

Help your customer or client find the answers they want

All panellists highlighted the importance of getting data to clients and customers as simply as possible. If that means setting up a dashboard for them, doing a demo on how to read the data, you need to help them make better decisions. It is important to educate them on the technology and help them influence the buyers.

Year round engagement is key

Increased success is attributed to consistent, attributable, year round audience interactions. Especially for event organisers, create value for clients and audience by building integrated campaigns. This could mean multiple touches including digital content,  whitepapers, and webinars and in person events sold as scalable, easy to deliver packages. It means you can deliver multiple touchpoints with the audience , and so when a lead does raise their hand, you can show those interactions and they are likely to be a higher quality lead.

Obsess over data quality, choose appropriate technology and automation

Once you have a scalable marketing services value proposition in place with a scalable set of packages and process to deliver them, technology and automation will really add value. Being able to target and deliver attribution reports at scale is critical for continued growth. Focus on making data available as simply as possible, consider the right dashboards and how best to seamlessly link to your key client’s marketing technology stacks.(and charge them for it!)
Automation can get the right data to your clients as fast as possible to demonstrate why their investment in your services is worthwhile. Take a look at how you can take your manual workflows and look to automate where it makes sense.

Don’t lose sight of the human touch

So you’ve got all the right tools and you’re delivering the data to the clients, but don’t forget the need for having the right people to deliver findings and elevate the data. Hire the right people so your team is able to show expertise in tech, media and marketing services and your specific sector/community. Investing in developing those in your business is vital and it’s equally important to continuously look outside your organisation to fill knowledge gaps.

Speakers

Fergus Gregory, Director, Collingwood Advisory (Moderator)

Fergus is an experienced B2B media business leader who has spent over 15 years in the world of media, subscriptions, and events with a strong track record as a hands-on director with responsibility for commercial activities, memberships, subscriptions, publishing and events brands. He has developed business across multiple industry sectors in Europe, North America, and APAC.

Fergus led two major profit centres at Informa, and was responsible for The Drum’s global expansion in his most recent role as Group Commercial Director. In his current role as Director of Collingwood Advisory’s Scaleup Practice, he works with clients on scaleup, sales strategy, and key product development.

Matthew Palmer, CEO, SDxCentral

Matthew has over 20 years experience and holds 25 patents across SDN, cloud computing, SaaS, and computer networking experience. Over the course of his career, he has held executive roles at Juniper, Netscreen, and Qualys.

Rhonda Wunderlin, SVP, Performance Marketing, Questex

Rhonda Wunderlin is the Senior Vice President, Performance Marketing at Questex. Rhonda has a proven track record of building highly effective teams and was honored as Modern Marketer of the Year by Oracle, 20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management and a Top Women In Media Change Maker honoree. She has also served as a board member of the American Marketing Association, Oracle’s Marketing Cloud Customer Advisory Board, KaiNexus Advisory Board, Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), Notified Customer Advisory Board, a founding member of Omeda’s Executive Advisory Board and a Board Member of BPA Worldwide.

Julian Lloyd Evans, Senior Adviser, Collingwood Advisory

Julian has spent the last 28 years developing market-leading media client solutions across a number of international markets as one of media’s most successful CROs. Julian’s work has taken him across all the main markets including technology, finance,
automotive, luxury, fitness and FMCG, and has over 27 years experience in both B2B and B2C. As an Executive Director and Chair, he specialises in transformation and has developed a number of fast-growing tech and media companies. Before joining Collingwood, Julian spent 25 years developing Dennis Publishing into one of the most successful international media companies and has worked with a number of important media companies including Future Plc, Immediate Media and Autovia.