ATL vs Performance Marketing & Setting Your Team Up for Success
At our recent 2024 B2B Content Marketing Summit, Chief Marketing Officer at Paysend, Rupert Bedell, delivered an eye-opening discussion covering the B2B marketing sales funnel in relation to ATL and performance marketing alongside team dynamics.
Unlike the other discussions from our expert guest speakers, Rupert came at it from the angle of the client and employer, as opposed to the creator and audience.
This angle provided a unique perspective from an expert in the industry who has lived and breathed high-performing B2B marketing campaigns his whole career.
Rupert Bedell | Chief Marketing Officer, Paysend
Described as “One of the UK’s highly experienced Financial Services marketers”, Rupert Bedell is the current Chief Marketing Officer at Paysend with previous experience leading B2B marketing at American Express for EMEA and B2B marketing at RBS.
He led the impressive rebranding of RBS through NatWest that contributed to the bank ranking number one NPS position in the UK for business banking after the financial collapse tarnished its reputation.
During his time at American Express, Rupert helped transform its B2B digital marketing by achieving 173% record acquisition growth. Meanwhile, in his current role at Paysend, he launched the brand in the USA and grew the global customer base to over eight million.
ATL vs Performance Marketing & Setting Your Team Up for Success
““You need to understand the role your content or advertising is performing in your sales funnel.””
The B2B Marketing Sales Funnel
“There is no point doing content or advertising until you figure out what’s going on at the point of purchase.”
In B2B marketing, we can sometimes lose touch with that most vital instrument – the sales funnel.
And unlike B2C marketing, B2B requires a more strenuous application phase. Notoriously, B2B applications tend to be longer and more complicated. If you’re a small business customer going through the application process, it’s five to six times longer than what a consumer would need in B2C.
But as Rupert eloquently stressed, for anyone going into an executive marketing role with pressures to advertise, win business and restructure the team, the first place to harness your attention is unravelling what’s happening in your B2B marketing sales funnel at the point of purchase.
This vital stage of the modern customer journey might involve direct website transactions, online bookings, purchases on apps or in-store, and even your sales team or other marketing materials.
Likewise, while comprehending what’s happening during conversions, it’s also vital to see if all customers starting an application are getting through to purchase.
If this isn’t the case, you must address why.
Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA) and Lifetime Value (LTV)
“No matter what industry you’re in, you’ve got to get an understanding of your cost-per-acquisition and lifetime value.”
Whether to your client, employer or executive board members, proving a healthy ROI is essential to support your ATL or performance marketing strategy.
And there’s nothing wrong with taking the easy road to begin with. Acquiring the “low-hanging fruit” with performance marketing, you can capitalise on specific searches relative to your niche to keep your CPA (cost-per-acquisition) nice and low.
After acquiring all the customers you can with niche, specific search terms, it may be time for your business to try expanding its reach and disrupting the general market. At this stage, naturally, your CPA will increase. Rise too far, and you have a flawed B2B marketing strategy because you can’t demonstrate a healthy ROI for your investors.
Putting your marketing strategy in terms of CPA vs LTV provides a logical, pragmatic and cost-effective approach when budgeting appropriately. After all, ensuring the money you spend to acquire new customers is not too high will help maintain your campaign’s sustainability and profitability.
Build a Brand with ATL
Now you’re no longer a big fish in the small pool of your market, taking a dip into the big leagues means competing against the elite players in the industry.
Players with big brands and large marketing budgets.
So, what do you do as a smaller company?
You need to build a brand.
Firstly, while securing the budget required to build a brand that can compete on some level with the competitors in your market, you need to invest in ATL marketing.
Secondly, relate how your ATL advertising or content works in the funnel. For example, the advertising or content might prove successful in the number of leads you generate, but what percentage of these leads are lost in the funnel and why?
It could be the specifics of your product/service are not suitable for these new leads. If you’re expanding into different locations, cultures and communities, these sub-markets may have various needs that your current product/service is not addressing.
Setting Up Your Team for Success
“I think marketing is a function that needs community more than any other. You need your team working together, you need them collaborating, you need them exchanging ideas in a way I don’t think exists in operations, finance or IT.”
As we all know, since the pandemic, working dynamics have shifted, with 25% hybrid, 16% fully remote and 40% in the office. In relation to marketing, Rupert stressed the importance of marketers working together.
In an age of a five-generation workforce, ranging from 18 and 65 beyond, collaboration is facing its toughest test yet when factoring in hybrid and remote working dynamics. After all, people of different generations sometimes struggle to connect and even interact.
Therefore, it’s integral for marketing leaders to foster those relationships because they’re potentially the most powerful in your team. When you get professionals with lots of experience combined with digital natives, you can establish brilliant chemistry. However, this is not possible without the input of a team leader.
From a logistical POV, typically, building a marketing team today will be governed by your product or channel. However, Rupert’s ideal is based on the B2B marketing sales funnel, with each person or team responsible for specific parts of the sales journey.
For example, people at the top of your B2B marketing sales funnel might deal with your website visits, while the next employee down could be applications, and so on. Each designated team receives rewards and incentives based on the performance of their sections.
This way, performance is judged by what’s happening in the B2B marketing sales funnel, with not just the numbers to prove it, but the numbers to recognise and motivate your team’s performance.
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