Knowledge sharing for digital decision makers
Conference, 3-5 May 2011

Jeff Ernst

Principal Analyst, Forrester Research

Biography

Jeff Ernst

Jeff serves CMO & Marketing Leadership Professionals. He is a leading expert in marketing strategy, solution-based marketing and selling, sales enablement, and building thought leadership through social media for B2B companies. His research focuses on B2B marketing for non-high-tech companies, with an emphasis on sales and marketing alignment and marketing’s effectiveness across the entire lead to cash process.

Prior to joining Forrester, Jeff served in executive and marketing leadership roles at several companies including FatWire, Infinium, Kadient, and Open Market. Recently, he led the definition and launch of Kadient’s new SaaS-based sales enablement platform, which helps Fortune 1000 companies improve B2B sales and marketing effectiveness.

Jeff is a frequent speaker and blogger on the topics of social media, sales enablement, and sales and marketing effectiveness. He is the author of The New Rules of Sales Enablement and co-author of How to Create Killer Sales Playbooks.

Jeff earned an M.B.A. with a concentration in marketing from the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College and a Bachelor of Science in finance from Babson College.

Forrester Research

Forrester Research

Forrester Research is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology. Forrester works with professionals in 19 key roles at major companies providing proprietary research, customer insight, consulting, events, and peer-to-peer executive programs. For more than 27 years, Forrester has been making IT, marketing, and technology industry leaders successful every day.

Presentation

Business Buyers are Consumers Too, What Are You Doing To Engage Them?

Track: Digital marketing
Conference Day #2, Thursday May 5th, 10.15 am - 11.00 am

As consumers, people are engaging with brands in entirely new ways, across web, social, and mobile channels. In the next decade, people will increasingly expect similar experiences when investigating and solving business problems for their companies.

What’s this mean for B2B CMOs who have their hands full today managing events, pushing product portfolios, and supporting direct and indirect sales teams? In this session, we’ll discuss:

  • What type of business buyer experiences are leading B2B marketers delivering today?
  • What digital platforms are they using to enable new forms of engagement?
  • How are B2B marketing organizations aligning their organizations to deliver these customer experiences?

I am challenging conventional wisdom, where many B2B marketers today are using digital, social, and mobile merely as additional channels to push out press releases and product information.  There are plenty of cool, sexy examples of companies using social and mobile to engage consumers, but B2B marketing leaders are asking how they can use these channels to engage business buyers.

Marketing leaders must put the “big ideas” ahead of the channel, and view these channels as conduits for expressing thought leadership and sharing provocative positions on critical issues they’re buyers are facing. I’ll tell the story with examples of companies doing something well.

For more on this talk, read How do you engage business buyers successfully online?

See slides online