DaveStevensNow

Blogging about Profitable B2B Marketing | Branding | Digital | Team-Building

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Dave is an experienced global B2B Chief Marketing Officer / Marketing Director with an established reputation for delivering commercial results in start-up, mid-tier, and blue-chip businesses across technology, and business services and professional services sectors. Dave has worked for major brands such as Telefonica O2, EY, and Barclays and held posts from Chief Marketing Officer to Director of Online, has run his own business, and managed a P&L for a major corporate. He is chair and co-founder of the Business Marketing Club (www.businessmarketingclub.org.uk) – a network of B2B marketers. In 2019, he was named one of the top 100 B2B European marketing leaders (https://www.hottopics.ht/34199/top-100-b2b-european-marketing-leaders-2019/). He is a graduate of Cambridge University, a Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) Chartered Marketer and holds a MBA with Imperial College, London. Dave is a keen cyclist and adventure traveller, is married, and lives in Buckinghamshire. You can read his blogs at www.DaveStevensNow.com.

  • Never enough people…


    By Dave Stevens
    Google+

    Judging by the number of pieces of research on marketing that have been crossing my desk of late, it’s report season.

    One such document that has been asking for my attention is a report from Frost & Sullivan on 2012 marketing priorities entitled “Assessing the Value Proposition”.  This report is based upon feedback from 539 managers and executives from companies around the globe.  And what did these luminaries say was the key root cause of marketing challenges in 2012?  ‘Insufficient personnel.’

    Limited resources, it is said, get in the way of developing a compelling value proposition.  Limited resources prevent marketers from understanding changing customer preferences and needs and incorporating the voice of the customer.  Limited resources stop us from prioritising markets and market segments.  There are limited resources in B2B and B2C.

    And this isn’t in a climate where marketing teams are shrinking.  Quite the contrary.  More than half of  respondents to the survey thought their teams would stay the same year on year and more than a third that they’d see a moderate increase.

    I find this view that marketers cannot deal with their key challenges due to lack of people quite perplexing.

    For years, this profession has been a rapidly growing one – in the size of marketing teams and budgets, the degree to which marketing is given a seat at the top table, and so on.  It has needed to grow rapidly because the profession is so young.  The word “marketing” didn’t exist before 1884.    B2C companies didn’t have marketing departments before 1970.  Marketing departments only appeared in B2B companies in the 1980s.

    But enough of that.  The profession has grown up.  No business today seriously thinks it can get by without marketing.  And in a world of economic turmoil where businesses lack confidence in year-on-year takings, we can’t keep bleating about lack of resources.  Marketers have to grow up with their profession.

    You can only have so many priorities to be successful.  If you have a key marketing challenge like value proposition development or segmentation, do what any manager in any profession would do – reallocate some of your best people to deal with it.  If you can’t do that, you don’t have a lack of resources but a lack of prioritisation skills.  It’s time for marketers to stop moaning.

  • Reasons to get to know a MEP


    By Dave Stevens
    Google+

    Have you ever had a conversation with an MEP?

    I had an opportunity to do so yesterday and in between complaining about how busy he was, how unappreciated he was, and the lack of feedback he was receiving from his constituents, he told me that we marketers should pay the EU more attention.  There’s a lot of legislation proposed for implementation over the next few years that will have a bearing on our world – including a big proposal around data protection.

    Interest aroused,  I decided to take a look.  A Google search took me to the European Commission website at www.europa.eu.  A search for data protection brought up a massive 42, 753 documents to work through.  No wonder MEPs are getting little feedback; potential critics are probably still working their way through the source material to pass comment.

    Let me save you the trouble.  The key link is here:- http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/12/46&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en.  The proposals listed are designed to save businesses some E2.3bn a year and talk about such apparently worthy ends as giving people more access to their own data and the right to have data deleted where a supplier has no legitimate grounds for retaining it.

    But the devil is in the detail – in this case the 54 page directive that you can download at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:52012PC0010:en:NOT.

    The directive takes the view that all customer data held by businesses is the same.  It is not.  For a start there is personal factual data about customers covering such things as date of birth and e-mail address – this is the information that customers want protection for.  But there is a mass of data that businesses collect about things that actually make all our lives easier – for example preference data where customers state likes and dislikes.  Increased regulation here is actually unhelpful  – and I don’t believe the vast majority of customers actually want it.  For example, think of the value that customers get when a company (perhaps a music sharing site or a retailer like Amazon) is able to tell them what else they might be interested in based upon their own selections to date.  This guidance is only possible because of the storage and use of customer preference data.

    And then there’s the apparent cost-saving that these regulations will enable.  I wonder if the billions of euros saved will be off-set by the costs of re-training staff, enhancing IT systems, and re-issuing of erms and conditions?

    Maybe all marketers should get to know their local MEP after all – to provide feedback on these proposals?

  • Take a deep breath and relax…


    By Dave Stevens
    Google+

    The traditionally more sober B2B marketing profession must be obsessed with social media if its suppliers are to be believed.  B2B marketers can’t move right now for events, webinars, white papers, books, articles, and yes even social media on the subject.

    I went along to just such an event earlier today.  The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) announced the latest findings from its social media bench-marking survey (http://live.smbenchmark.com/) in a presentation at the swanky Bloomberg offices near Liverpool Street.

    The findings made an interesting read.  For once, the data took into account B2B organisations as much as B2C ones (not a common allowance from the CIM so a well done to them) and it found that while B2C organisations were social networking because their customers were, for B2B organisations the reasons to go social were not so apparent.  Most B2B organisations claimed to be in social media to experiment.  Quite simply, the B2Bs were there because they saw their B2C counterparts going social and felt they should compete or were being pressured into social because of the aforementioned media hustle.

    So my message to B2B marketers is to chill out.  You’re doing the right thing to experiment with social media because it’s really not apparent to anyone yet how this is going to play in the B2B marketing mix of the future.  (And by the way social will certainly only ever be part of a mix of channels available – never the one and only).

    I suspect that the key for B2B will lie in the integration of social media with live marketing activities such as events.  It was interesting to see how many of the audience at today’s CIM event sat with mobiles and tablets on their laps and paid more attention to their Twitter feeds than to the presenters (who were great by the way).

    But for now the jury’s out on the value of social media as a marketing tool in the B2B space.  So B2B marketers can take a bit more time to work this through.

    Take a deep breath and relax…

  • Hello World!


    My name is Dave Stevens and I am passionate about good marketing that delivers results.  I’ve spent almost twenty years in the profession across public, private, and voluntary sector organisations including work for such organisations as Telefonica O2 (http://www.o2.co.uk/) and Barclays (http://group.barclays.com/home).  Right now, I’m the UK and Ireland Marketing Director at EY (http:///www.ey.co.uk), a global leader in assurance, tax, transactions and advisory services.  I’m recognised as a Chartered Marketer by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (http://www.cim.co.uk/home.aspx).

    What follows will cover my views and opinions on the dynamic and groovy marketing profession as it becomes increasingly established as a must-have requirement in business.  And they’re my views and opinions – not those of any of the organisations I’ve worked for.  I hope you find them interesting.