Check out this Forrester B2B Summit 2022 Coverage by MartechAsia.
Forrester key business leaders, including analysts, research directors, and guest technology and marketing leaders, shared their expertise on emerging marketing technology topics in the Forrester B2B Summit APAC 2022 keynotes. Check out MartechAsia’s coverage and key takeaways from this event.
Evolving B2B Regional Buying Behaviours
Marketers must understand buyer expectations within the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. Portfolio marketing, brand communications, and field marketing are important considerations to respond to the changing buyer behaviours and market changes properly.
The speakers highlighted the changing behaviours of APAC buyers and how marketers can adapt to these changes.
“Our regional buyers demand more interaction across the board,” said Barry Vasudevan, VP, Principal Analyst of Forrester. He mentioned that regional buyers are looking for more content and conversations. B2B buyers want more than just technology information.
Mavis Liew, the Executive Partner and Principal Analyst of Forrester, highlighted the key recommendations for B2B marketers.
“Ensure that your organisation walks the talk. Make sure that your CSR initiatives align to the corporate values that are exhibited by your employees, no matter what channels they may intervene to communicate with the buyers,” Liew said.
The Future of B2B Content
In this keynote topic, Siew Ting Foo, the CMO Asia Pacific, HP Inc, and Forrester Principal Analysts, Phyllis Davidson and Mavis Liew explained why APAC organisations must align and upgrade content roles across revenue engine functions.
Davidson explained that engaging in actions of the content lifecycle is important. Instead of being audience-centric, many websites are still product-focused.
“When it comes to production, we’re still dealing with manual, outdated processes. We tend not to prioritise what’s strategically important. When it comes to promotion, we still have very limited personalisation and customisation, and yet our audience is crying out for that,” Davidson said.
She also discussed content and the CX experience model. “Content is in itself data. As audiences interact with it, it creates more data around them. In every bit of this experience, there’s content and data attached to it,” Davidson added.
Siew Ting Foo shared her insights into creating customer-first culture. “Marketing must be the first to own the customer’s voice,” she said. Employee experience leads to customer experience. If employees become advocates of the brand, everything follows.
APAC marketers must acknowledge the critical role of content development in generating more insights to optimise customer experiences. As audiences consume content, they generate signals that tell what they need. Hence, robust content metadata, taxonomy, and AI are the keys to the content kingdom. These unlock customer insights and optimise the customer experience.
Return on Integration, Grant Thornton
Fraser McNaughton, the Chief Marketing Officer of Grant Thornton Australia, discussed connecting marketing and sales. Grant Thornton is an accounting advisory consulting firm with 150 firms across the globe.
Grant Thornton faced some challenges, according to McNaughton. These challenges include business sales and marketing technology data, misalignment between sales and marketing, and low levels of prospecting pipeline management.
“We reached out to Forrester to get their insights. Forrester Decisions helped us accelerate to our goal,” McNaughton said.
Like Grant Thornton, Forrester helps many APAC enterprises refine their campaign strategies, add more value to their sales cycle, evolve technology infrastructure, and hyper-personalise buyer experiences.
Smarter Demand, Scalable ABM: B2B Marketing’s Next Evolution
The key takeaways for this keynote include reimagining capabilities by defining an aligned strategy towards smarter demand and scalable ABM, growing existing customers, and optimizing revenue stream.
Principal Analysts of Forrester John Arnold and Daryl Wright discussed how to position resources, planning, and capabilities to embrace demand and ABM marketing’s unified future and how it will support future growth.
The speakers explained the four big limitations demand account-based marketers must address and a detailed vision for operational change. They also shared practical advice to go beyond demand and ABM convergence. Leaders must focus on transforming planning, programmes, capabilities, and performance to meet buyer expectations and needs. Polling questions were raised in between sessions to obtain the take of the attendees about the above keynote topics. The keynotes are available to watch on-demand for up to 90 days. The Forrester B2B Summit APAC 2022 was held on September 20 to 21, 2022, at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Singapore.
