Reflections on the B2B Marketing Summit – Rachael Evans, Man Bites Dog

We seem to be in the midst of peak conference season, as last week Man Bites Dog had delegates out and about at a number of Tech Week events including Interop London, as well as FutureComms15 – ‘the PR and comms event of the year’, and B2B Marketing magazine's annual summit. I attended the latter.

It was reassuring to find that the topics raised during the summit were issues that chime with Man Bites Dog’s passion areas: content aligned to user experience; mapping the buyer journey; and connecting with your audience on an emotional level. In these areas, it feels as though the industry is aligned and though the goal may be further away for some, we are all at least aiming for the same target.

Michael Brenner’s keynote provided the great advice that: “The buyer journey is nothing more than a series of questions waiting to be answered.”

At Man Bites Dog our mantra is to create content that stimulates action and inspires the audience to think, feel or do something. But to ensure we consistently provide the most relevant messaging, we must consider the stage of the buying journey the audience is on when they encounter our content. My colleague Toby has written a great blog on this topic, which you can read here.

Michael Brenner also echoed a strong belief of Man Bites Dog that “content should become an important component of everyone’s job.” As communicators, content is what we do and its criticality cannot for a second be understated.

I would add though, that content for content’s sake should not be encouraged. We are keen believers of this. For more information on our approach, read Lauren’s latest post, ‘Content is King but Research Rules’.

Furthermore, as Simon Morris, Director of Demand Generation’s presentation on the creation of CMO.com confirmed, content needs to connect with its audience on an emotional level – addressing their fears, hopes and ambitions. The development of client personas and user experience mapping, including cross platform engagement needs to become a fundamental part of communicators’ day-to-day activity if we ever wish to meaningfully connect with our audiences.

To find out what Man Bites Dog can do for you on your content journey, get in touch.

Rachael Evans is Director of Marketing & New Relationships at Man Bites Dog.