Over 40 marketeers from the tech industry gathered at the London Tech Marketing Meetup for an evening of networking, sharing best practices and hearing from other Marketing leaders in the industry.
The evening started with a Q&A with Digital Talent agency, Native Gravity, followed by the much anticipated Marketing Leadership panel with Hannah Stewart (VP of Marketing, Yieldify), Andrea Snagg (Marketing Director EMEA, Channel Advisor) & Captify’s Global Director of Marketing, Laura Pleasants. The session was moderated by Mark Choueke, content guru & Founder of Rebeltech PR.
The panel was filled with frank, honest and bold opinions around the complexities of building the modern marketing team, diversity, working across markets and the common challenges faced by B2B marketers. Some key themes emerging around the panel were:
The changing role of marketing
Marketing was traditionally seen as reactive, where teams would respond to ad hoc requests, however the function has evolved and become a driving force for the growth of businesses.
Captify’s Laura Pleasants noted that “the perfect marketing team doesn’t exist in reality, they have to constantly pivot and adapt to the business. Modern marketers have a responsibility to educate the business about the changing role of marketing.”
Hannah from Yieldify pointed out that “Marketing is more under scrutiny than ever before, with a lean team and tight budgets, every dollar has to be accountable”.
There were some differences across the panel on how marketing budgets should be spent, with debates around whether awareness or ROI was more important in modern marketing. Captify’s Laura Pleasant said “it’s vital to educate customers on what Captify stands for, we’ve worked hard to create a design that cuts through and reflects the personality of our brand. We are fortunate that our founders believe in old fashioned creative marketing, with top of the funnel brand awareness being paramount, especially in new markets.”
Building the right team
The panel debated the pros and cons of freelance vs permanent with a general consensus that freelance marketers are effective for helping with resource shortages and filling skill gaps for certain projects. However, permanent employees still remain incredibly important for their knowledge around the company and its products/services, coupled with their innate belief in the company vision. It was agreed that hiring the right people can be your biggest legacy and can be more important than any project you undertake.
Nurturing people talent & creativity
To end the lively discussion, the panel was posed with the question “are marketing superstars born or made?”
It was unanimously agreed that no matter the varying role of the marketing function or strategy, great marketeers are made, not born, through both personal development and coaching, mentoring and nurturing from managers through their careers.
We look forward to the next London Tech Marketing Meetup.
