I recently had the honour and privilege of going back to Cranfield University and presenting a keynote lecture to the Strategic Marketing MSc students. One reason why this was so special for me was that only a few years ago I was an MBA student at Cranfield and since then it had been one of my ambitions to be invited back to speak. By 23rd January that ambition had been realised.
I gave a talk entitled “Enabling complex B2B sales using PR and content marketing” – a subject close to my heart and one I could talk all day on. Fortunately for the students I was only given an hour, and a somewhat massaged set of slides can be found below.
From what I could tell, the message that resonated most was an incredibly simple one:
“to be successful you need to be present in the moments that matter”
It sounds simple, but with B2B sales becoming increasingly driven by the buyer, it is important that content created by, or for, your organisation is the content a customer or prospect finds when they go to Google and search for information about a topic.
By being present in the moments that matter you increase brand recognition and trust and gain an opportunity to start a relationship with a customer. This approach also has the happy side effect of helping transition sales away from “just selling” towards a process of “co-creation” – a process that has both parties involved and invested and leads to a greater chance of a mutually beneficial arrangement being reached. [To learn more about this subject, I recommend reading the book “From Selling to Co-Creating” written by Javier Marcos, Senior Lecturer in Sales Performance at Cranfield]
Another reason the keynote was so special was just how engaged the students were. Questions that were asked about the future of marketing, how agencies like Pinnacle will overcome the “content overload” challenge and how wearable technology will change sales and marketing showed just how forward-thinking my audience was.
But enough text for now, I hope you enjoy the SlideShare below:
