87 | The power sits with marketing. Time to get the glory.

87 | The power sits with Marketing. Time to get the glory.

Jon Busby: Thank you Therese Parks for joining us on the Tech Marketing podcast. I am super excited to go through some of these talking points today because you are obviously part of the tech B2B ads practice at Google. So you've got true insight into some of the changes we're seeing in the bio buyer journey.

For some of our audience that of course can't be with us here at the Wonderful a Masters of B2B event we'd love to give our listeners a flavour for what they've missed so, there isn't a tech marketer out there that isn't a little bit overwhelmed at the moment. Could you give us a little overview on your research and some of the key points marketeers should know?

Therese Parkes: Yeah, absolutely. And thank you so much for having me. I, we've done several waves of research. We believe strongly that this market and segment particularly is thought leadership is really important. And so we have centered much of our time on, on independent research. And our latest wave of research is the long and winding consideration phase.

So in B2B particularly, we typically focus on the first mile and the last mile, but not in the middle where so many decisions are actually made. And so we find that there's a huge opportunity. So 49%, nearly half are in market at any point in time. And and there's also a really long time to influence.

So the average buying time of technology or B2B technology purchase is 31 weeks. So you can imagine that in that time there's a significant opportunity to make or break as a brand finding that consumer.

Jon Busby: So hang on. Cause we, we saw a stat yesterday and we've been talking about this a lot from, I think it's the B2B international stat was brought up on stage that talks around, fi only 5% of your buyer is in market from time to time.

You've said 49%. Like how would you define that? 49%. And why do those stats differ? Differ?

Therese Parkes: Yeah. So there is and it's interesting and we'd have to understand where that research came from, but we just completed this research and what we found is there are different phases of about their immediacy.

Yeah. So a certain subset of those are going to be looking for an absolute immediate need, but several of them indicated that they are doing current research for a future need. And so what that indicates is that there's ample opportunity especially that we know that 86% of tech B2B buyers start with a day one list.

That day one list Yep. Is influenced by the random brand exposures that they may have or anything. It could be personal experience, their day-to-day digital interactions. It could be word of mouth, but certainly there searches online are going to be highly influential in that space. And so if you are not there when they're searching, then you're missing an Apple opportunity to in, to be part of that day one list, which gives you a massive leg up in over competition.

It's a really interesting point. So we are doing some research together as well at the moment. Where. And you just alluded to a lot of the challenges in that B2B buyer journey. Yeah. Everyone's doing a lot more research themselves. Correct. They're doing they want to, that research normally come from more agnostic places where they're not being influenced by one particular vendor.

At least that's what we tend to see. Absolutely. Would how. When a buyer is creating that, that initial list, what would you say the challenges they have in making sure it's right for their business?

So every I think there's a myriad of things that have changed especially in the way that the consumer has changed, right?

So I think what's interesting is from my perspective, and I spend a lot of time talking to obviously the C-suite of technology. Companies we're still are participating in a very old way of selling. We hand over, we get them to hand over some form of ip, and then we get inside sales to reach out or or via LinkedIn, and then we hand them over, we get a marketing qualified lead, and then we hand them over to a sales rep.

Yeah. Yep. Yep. Let's reflect on the fact that, the, there are now 17 stakeholders. In an average buying group of a technology purchase, gone are the days of it being relegated to an IT or procurement, or even the cto. So ABM or that kind of lead gen is actually antiquated compared to the diverse sort of stakeholders that are involved.

Yep. 92% of senior colleagues like that CTO takes recommendations from junior colleagues. 75% of the entire workforce is going to be gen Z or Millennial by 2030. Gen Z and millennials are highly influenced by digital sources, whether that be video, whether that be searches, whether that be social.

And so what has happened in particularly since the pandemic. We got incredibly comfortable with buying everything online. Groceries, jeans, which I would've never bought prior. I had to go try on a thousand pairs, but houses and cars and so if and those more digital native. Participants are expecting B2B buyer experiences that match their consumer experiences.

Yes. Yeah. And the B2B seller is reticent to actually jump on board. It's ripe for disruption. Somebody will, I'm hoping to be part of that change, but I think. When you think about the criteria on that list, it really is about that everyone has a unique journey and you should be thinking about the key purchase criteria against the diverse set of stakeholders.

So there will be procurement that will be price, there will be end users that will be ease of use. There will be the CTO that might be brand reputation, but. This really calls for a multi-channel, multidisciplinary marketing program. To ensure that you're reaching the right stakeholder at the right moment with the right message, and it's not a singularity.

Jon Busby: Why? Why do we suppose that B2B sellers are struggling to make that transition?

Therese Parkes: My supposition is that we are organized it's organizational silos. It's the deification of sales and marketing versus marketing. Yep. And I say this, In full irony of having been an enterprise seller myself in and and in a sales function at Google.

But it's very meta of me to try and sell against sales, but I actually just think that we're not following our consumer, right? I think that marketing and sales and essentially traditional silos within any organization need to be broken down. And based on that consumer behavior, if marketing was given the tools the measurement capability to go further in to revenue, yep.

We would see the interplay and the value and the credit to marketing far further. Yep. And it would change the dynamic. So I think right now we're hemmed in by traditional incentive structures, cost structures. We've hired a lot of sales executives, and I'm not saying that there isn't a huge place for sales.

I, I wanna be very clear about that. But I think that marketing can go further in making sure that sales is highly effective when they go in because they know more. Marketing is the one place that knows probably the most about the consumer within, in any organization. I

Jon Busby: couldn't agree more. I think the really, I.

Fascinating the trend that we are seeing. And I'd love to pick your brains on this. That's what we're gonna do now. The we're seeing the rise of the cro, right? Yeah. Yeah. So in the last two or three years, we've seen you chief sales officer, if that really existed as a term and CMO be replaced more by, by the Chief Revenue Officer.

On top of that which is showing the focus on customer centricity, showing the focus on combining sales and marketing together. But is it, I, yeah, no let's pull this thread.

Therese Parkes: Actually think that CROs are still just the sales. I think sales is still. Because we haven't built, we don't give engineering teams to marketing.

We don't prioritize internal measurement systems. To we stop at traditional mql sql.

But do this is a debate. I'm, that I'm thinking is there is, there's two types of organization. We're seeing some that. Are looking at revenue and are looking at pipeline.

They look at Rev, they look at marketing influenced pipeline.

Okay. Yep. But they are making, but the measurement that facilitated that Yep. Is likely not correct. Okay. Or facilitated in an end-to-end way, just based on the fact that they what they're capturing, they're likely only capturing a lead for fill form. Yep. And if they actually allowed.

More interactivity for their, those like heavily research, right? Like I we're potentially gonna kick off another wave of research that shows how far these buyers would go sell service and how big a purchase. I think the reality is that there is a place for sales, but this is, but there's more of a hybrid than we think.

And there's a lot of efficiency to be had here because if we could. Take more of the insight from that. Marketing has, where they're spending time on site, what they were drilling into site analytics or what value proposition or what demo they watched or those types of things. You could then equip sales far more readily to go in with the incredible specificity of what the value proposition is that buyer is looking for.

And that sales process could now be. Far more highly efficient as opposed to doing discovery again and then giving the full demo and then overcoming all the objections. We can start to parse out areas and ideally sales can be even more lethal, but marketing can also be. A key part of the story.

Jon Busby: But this is the bit that's am confusing me because we know that it just makes sense to be thinking along those lines to be integrating marketing more with sales. So why aren't organizations doing it? So really, like we, we talk about things being siloed, but it just never seems to get any further.

Therese Parkes: Yeah, I struggle with this as well. I think that in general particularly we all look the tools and services that these that the companies that I represent facilitate remote work. They enabled our lives when we were in a pandemic environment and grew organically at pace, right? Yep. Storming well, we come back into a more normalization period, and then the market reacts. And now they're all incredibly conservative. And with the market itself, not investing in tech in the same way. Many of them are making very difficult choices at the CFO level. To say it's, is it better to invest in my product or to invest in engineering resources to create this measurement system?

Or is it better just to sit on this cash or do buybacks and create more shareholder value? And all of those decisions are increasingly hard. When you don't really know with the uncertainty that we've been faced with. And on top of that, I would say in any time of change you revert to old process.

You, you don't, experimentation should actually be like that. Challenge and discomfort should be forcing function for experimentation. It almost never is. It's those that do embrace it. That really accelerate out that curve. Yep. And take over the pack. But those are singularities almost.

Jon Busby: And that, I think that's the point that I was at least coming to in, in my head, which is I've. I was trained in marketing 20 years ago, and we were talking about sales and marketing alignment back then. Yep. And to still be talking about it now, it's just like, why are we having the same conversation?

What, there's fundamentally, there's just something that's, that, that seems to be incompatible between the two. I

Therese Parkes: think it comes down to credit and, but I, I think everyone is aspiring to be the owner of attributed value. And sales wants to own all revenue. So you're going to this Yeah.

Organization and saying, Hey, I want, I wanna be credited for that. And, that's a sales job in and of itself. I think this is where the CFO and the CEO and the board Yep. Need great education about the power of what marketing can do. But traditionally marketing has always been seen as a cost center.

We really need to do a lot of education around, The, but it's like chicken and egg or a self-fulfilling, you need to believe in it. Yep. Invest in it and then see it ahead of, the measurement systems that facilitate the understanding of it actually need to be installed, which isn't an investment in of itself.

Yep. So it's incredibly difficult to get them to make those leaps, especially in times of challenge.

Jon Busby: And there, there's so much there. We could unpack the. The metrics is a really key one. Like I was having this debate with with a security vendor the other day. Yep. And we all, we saw it yesterday, the whole 50 50 split between brand and demand and how that should be best practice.

Yep. Yet, everyone, it comes to the end of quarterly results and I think Wall Street's got a lot to answer for and how marketing hasn't really been able to push things forward, but Wow. When it comes to the end of a quarter and everyone just goes let's put 80% into demand, or let's put 90% into demand.

Therese Parkes: Yeah. I think there's also been. Particularly market analysts and I now sit on capital G, which is Alphabet's investment arm. And one of the things, those things that I'm really hoping to do is get more involved in startups, boards, but also effectively the analyst environment because.

These companies are all being held to cohort spent. And that cohort spent, like cohort. If you spend more in marketing than your cohort as an X percent of your Yes. Of your business revenue, right? Yep. So typically that's around a low teens percentage. You are penalized,

Jon Busby: but you're, you.

So from an investment perspective, let's say a V VC looks at a cohort and they say, if you are outspending your, the rest of your peers, then you're penalized.

Therese Parkes: Not the vc, the market analyst when it comes to public companies, but I'm trying to get INV involved to drive Yeah. The change and then demonstrate.

Like with vc, then it do, then we, it doesn't matter, right? Yeah. Yeah. So if we can change it there, disrupt it, and demonstrate that there's actually a much better flywheel and a much greater efficiency. But the point is that public companies are actually greatly penalized. Because if one versus another in the very same cohort have, 12 to 14%, that 14% will actually take a hit on its future

Jon Busby: rating.

You're just restricting innovation by having by

Therese Parkes: 1000%. But crazy. This is where I am. When I was offered this job, they were like, this isn't, The, there's, you have lots of options. There's, this isn't the sexiest of roles potentially. And but reality is I just see so much opportunity for transformation and it's so needed.

Yeah. That I find sifi and energy to just keep pushing that rock up that hill because I. There's a cautionary tale here, right? Like the blockbusters, the the Kodaks. We're missing our consumer in a very significant way.

Jon Busby: Look at the way I phrase this question.

How do I ask this? Who would you say is doing this then, Is there anyone that stands out to be like that? Is that is how it should be executed?

Therese Parkes: Yeah, there are some newer companies that are doing it incredibly well and we are partnering with those that have so ServiceNow is one of the companies that I partner with.

And while I wouldn't say that they're a hundred percent. There yet they have bought in. They understand it. I was just in Singapore with them and speaking to their entire Asia APAC team. And they have a a robust digital plan and they are evangelizing that digital plan across their teams.

And now they're not necessarily gonna get rid of salespeople and nor am I advising that, but they do understand that marketing should have end-to-end measurement. Yeah. That marketing should be able to really not just how much pipeline it touched, but what sources it influenced. They can break down their pipeline and say, X amount was.

Field versus ABM versus digital versus, and you'd be shocked at how much is digital. Versus how much is field or abm. And the reality is that most companies, so I took that sort of insight and I then went to the CMO of a securities. Like a cybersecurity company. And I said, how much of your pipeline is marketing influence?

And he absolutely knew. But his concept of what forms of marketing drove that were wildly different

Jon Busby: I think this is a problem we had in b2b. Like I've always said, if we could crack attribution like where Mark, then 100% that would be that. Yeah. That would be the kind of golden egg.

Therese Parkes: And I think the Attri, I think my view is that inherently attribute the problem with attribution is that we're stopping at something like a lead fill.

And in the reality of today's distributed there are potentially there's 17 stakeholders potentially, right? Yep. They up, they have potentially up to 40 different brand touches themselves, and then their own day-to-day interactions. There are 900 different iterations or touch points that you could have like amongst those 17 stakeholders across 31 weeks, and that's making it conservative.

Making attribution against that in a leads type system is impossible. It really doesn't happen. But if you move and embrace a more signal based system, yep. So it is now the time that we need to move away from the way a, a lead fill is a singular action. It's one moment, it's one thing that happened across 31 weeks.

It is not indicative necessarily of a buying behavior. Yep. And yet we've made it the end all be all.

Jon Busby: I think I, this comes into one of the sessions that we were you here yesterday? Did you, no, I wasn't. So there was a fantastic workshop. I, we, he's, I think he's running a session tomorrow as well.

And it's something we've been talking about a lot and something obviously Google influences as well, which is the removal of third party cookies. They're going away. Yes. It's a big, it is a, yes, it's gonna be a big deal. Yes. It's gonna be a brick wall next year for many brands. Yes. And what you've just mentioned there is some, is a big personal passion of mine, which is data.

You need to be collecting that first party data Yes. To take, to be able to approach things. Using that, that signals based methodology. You know what, firstly would you say many brands need to start embracing that? I think the answer is gonna be yes. I don't think, I don't think it's gonna be anything

Therese Parkes: else.

Is it really? No. Unequivocally, you absolutely need to be investing in your first party data. First and foremost, because that is the richest form of interaction. Those are your customers. Those are your touch points. Those are things that have happened to you. This is not, and in a privacy safe world, That is going to be your only form of currency, right?

It used to be, and I'm on a podcast so you can't see the visual, but it used to be that third party cookies could take all of the interaction or understanding or attribution of any interaction and that will go to nil. And now the only form of actual understanding of what your customer set looks like will be a first party. So if you don't have some form of c DP or some understanding of a CRM or some repository and you're not collecting it actively and maintaining it and working to. Nurture it and finding ways to exchange value for that. So if you're asking your consumer to give them, to give you, sorry, something of themselves, then what is your value exchange strategy in that?

People. Are interested in connected and personalized experiences if they perceive there's value in it, they are also, we know 60% are concerned about what, where their data is used and whatnot. But we know that 80 plus percent are more than willing to exchange it if they view that there is a perceived benefit in that for them.

Jon Busby: So let's talk about what a brand, lots of this change is gonna be very concerning for marketing teams. We're going through a lot of disruption now. It's, we're actually the coin, the term we're using it together is, digital disruption in times of economic uncertainty.

Yeah. So we've just seen artificial intelligence, come, come out of nowhere. I'm sure that's impacting you guys, like what we've just mentioned, a CDP being a key or first party data being a key part of that. Let's talk about the rest of a modern marketing team.

Like what, as we move into this, Uncertainty. What does a team structure need to look like? How does it need to change to take advantage of this new B2B buy journey?

Therese Parkes: Yeah, it's a really good question. I think we talked earlier about the funnel. And I think one of the key tenets is that the reality is that with this complexity of the journey, with the number of stakeholders that there are Traditional marketing funnels don't really exist anymore.

They're irrelevant. People are going in and outta decision making modes. And so there's no more linear fill. The top they go through in one singularity or one single path. And so we need to build far more agile. Cross-functional and collectively KPId teams toward the customer.

Like just solving the customer moments in the right app collectively as opposed to what our KPIs or our incentives might be. A really great example and I don't know if you've talked to him, Jeff Lowe from Smart Technologies. Yep. So w. Ages ago I found one of a case study in hbr and I was using it and I was just enamored with the idea of how radically they.

Dismantled their entire corporation to then have this unified commercial engine. And it was no longer, it was all about the way they renamed every single person to be these customer buying jobs like learn and Buy and adopt install as opposed to sales marketing. Like how brave, no one's done that really.

And I. I had been using it in talks and really trying to use it as a very provocative example. And it worked really well for them. They grew 49% year in year. They, their leads increased by 35%. But I had to talk to Jeff because I was like, is it like after December's a I was like, is it still working because I'm using this all the time.

And the reality is they love it. In fact, they've gotten even more efficient. They're they are doubling down. And so I think now is that time for bravery to really investigate and look inward about who your customer is. And what opportunities you have gone is the moment where brand marketing needs to own this.

And especially when we think about all of the multi-format products that are coming out in so many different areas, right? Like the concept of marketing is fundamentally shifting as well. And so those strict rules are no longer gonna apply. We need to be more adaptive to our customer.

Jon Busby: So would you recommend from a team perspective then that, based on the fact you're using Jeff Lowe's, uce example, that they do start to dismantle their organization and build up based on the customer journey?

Or is that a very extreme case?

Therese Parkes: I think that is the utopia of, of or most provocation I can offer. What I would say is that at very least Marketing itself should not have a brand team, a digital team, a video team. A performance team. There should be a shared understanding about what your top line business goal is.

Your top line acquisition goal is and how everyone is contributing to that. These are, many of these companies have install bases. Most of the companies I talk to, The biggest problem they have is that they're known for one thing, but they have a portfolio of products. So how are you marketing to your existing base of customers, keeping those customers happy, growing and expanding across your portfolio, and then working and then having another set of your team working on acquisition.

But the media they use maybe, cross-functional in that sense. Like we shouldn't have. Single disciplinary experts in just one form of media necessarily. Or we need to deploy them in little pods so that they actually work together.

Yeah it does.

Jon Busby: And Jeff's concept of pods, by the way, they're geographically deployed

Therese Parkes: that was so unbelievable

Jon Busby: it solved so many problems that marketing teams have.

Oh marketing and sales teams have, sorry, market and sales and service. Yes. Yeah, it does.

Therese Parkes: So legitimately and the reason their leads went up by 35% is because they were using regionally specific strategies. Right? So look, should all companies be dismantled out of, singular corporations and have regionally specific strategies that be, are able to service a customer end to end in a virtual world, you may be able to do that, right?

If everyone's working remotely and in respective time zones, maybe that's possible. Do I think that's the future? Maybe, but I think it's, we don't even sell, like remotely close to the way the customer buys today. So I think the delta between that and and where we are today seems too great for me to offer that This is like the way that everyone should do it.

Yeah, no I completely agree. Like I, the. That concept of not being a video. There's some, it's definitely somewhere in the middle. Cause my concern would be, are you gonna be a jackal if you go down that route? Are you gonna be a jack of all trades and a master of none? Yeah.

No, and I hear that and that's why I offered maybe a pod strategy of where you like work with okay, we have the acquisition goal across the customer, but whether that's existing customers or not existing customers, but you just need to find forcing functions that allow you to be on the same page.

I think it's too easy to. Even intra department, like within marketing to have goals that don't necessarily ladder to the same thing. So when we talk about organizational change, there in a crawl, walk, run strategy okay, if sprinting down the road is Jeff and smart technologies, Crawl could just be like, do they all make sense together?

Are you actually cannibalizing each other or competing against each other in real ways? I. And then even better, how are you interacting with marketing, sales. So how is sales and marketing working together? Let's start in our own backyard and then move up into, okay, how can marketing ensure that when sales goes in, it's a one and done.

And we're so efficient now because we know exactly what that value proposition was. And. How can we be even more efficient with our marketing? Because we have all the right first party data and we're leveraging that across all of the touch points that we may have, right? I think.

There's even so much there, let alone just starting. Maybe it was just easier to start from scratch, but and

Jon Busby: okay, so we've talked a little bit about process there. We've talked about technology, we've talked a bit about people. You, we talked, you mentioned KPIs earlier. What if we, if you were to start from scratch, like what KPIs would you recommend marketers now track?

Therese Parkes: I think ultimately the ideal state is to be able to track your business outcomes to like, And customer value to things like predictive lifetime value. Or ultimately it just seems to be a, something that is intrinsically valuable to the company from a long-term perspective as opposed to something like a lead fill.

But really in order to understand what value you should be, you really need to understand what sort of held metrics you have, and then be tracking as much of, or understanding at least much of the customer interactions you have, and then pairing them together and doing a bit of, correlation.

Causal analysis to understand. What is the indicator? As mentioned before, a lead fill is a singular action, right? What if you find out that people that actually spent time researching the pricing on your site, that was the biggest indicator of a buying signal, and you optimized your performance.

Strategies into just finding more of them. Don't worry about the lead fill, don't worry about getting them into your system so that you can control them, but instead find the, through the tracking that you can see, through the interactions and the and the interactivity you have with your customers.

Pair that statistically with what you care about, and you will actually find there's more magic in the data that you have. As opposed to what you may have had as a held belief.

Jon Busby: Yeah. I, you, and you mentioned a few terms there that are very data sciencey, correlation statistic now, like one, one challenge I've found with brands and I met with the data scientist on a brand side, on the storage industry.

And the stuff that the analysis was. It was mind blowing how they built their customers in different cohorts. How they understood, yeah, essentially they were able to say, if we can drive this behavior of a lead, then they're able to convert thousands of percent higher. Yep. You know better.

But then when we looked at how a campaign was being run, as soon as someone filled in the form, guess what? Sales called them. That's right. Like how can you, I just, I, we're right back to the beginning of the podcast here. Like I just still don't understand how these two people are in the same organization, but they just don't seem to be talking to each other.

Therese Parkes: Yeah. My mission in this is to influence hire, right? The CFO and the CEO and the board need to understand that these two incredibly important functions have. Incredibly divergent goals. And profitability and margin protection is all you hear out of the CEO's mouth when they're talking about their earnings.

Think about the profitability and the margin protection you could create if you actually de-duplicated some of this sort of ineffective behavior. Yeah. Yeah. There's a real call to action here, but it's about education and CEOs. Love them don't often value marketing. CFOs don't often see marketing as value.

They think of it as a cost center. So there's a lot of education that needs to take place here, and we get back to that circular flywheel of it needs to be measurable, thus provable to be, to shift that perspective from cost to a net positive revenue contributor. So my latest endeavor has been to speak to as many CFOs as I can to try and shift their perspective, right?

Like your brand is an asset. If you thought of your brand as an asset, how would that shift the way that you think about investment in it, right? As opposed to just something that's fleeting. Many CFOs think that marketing is the quickest way to save money. You can turn it off and it always comes back.

We have found that those that decreased brand spending have 6% lower total shareholder return over the next three years than those that didn't. And for every dollar saved it, it costs you a dollar 85 to get it back. In reality, it's not cost savings at all. You are actually just hurting yourselves over and over again in the name of cost savings because you view it as ephemeral and not important.

But the reality is that it's a critical component because if you look at the top buying criteria against what your consumers would say brand reputation and all of these things how are you building them? Secret's out it's marketing. And even further, we know that only 5% of a total buying time journey is spent with sales.

But let's go back to the fact that 86% have a day one list. And they were through all their, our day-to-day interactions we're already highly influenced. As to who those should be. So if we had the kind of measurement, if we had these kind of dialogues, I think there would be a fundamentally different dynamic.

It's just that this is legacy. I did a talk at Salesforce a year ago and I had a video of Wolf of Wall Street, like Leo calling up and selling, and it was a shed and it was a phone, and it made sense then that you could sell this vision of something when you couldn't see it. But the democratization of the internet and the acceleration of the pandemic, it's all seen. It's all known, and it's being experienced in a digital way through that buyer. The seller just is not coming on that journey yet.

Jon Busby: Just so let's, so we're coming onto our closing question here. I'm so glad we recorded that cause I'm just gonna send that to all of my clients.

Like, why are you reducing your brand spend? You, this is how much it's gonna cost. You get, getting it back. You've mentioned a lot of what we've discussed here. I think it has its roots in B2C if we think about right? Of course it does. So what's the next thing, and you hinted at this earlier, what's the next.

Big behavior change you are predicting or researching at Google? What's, what do you think's next?

Therese Parkes: As is on everyone's bingo card, everything is gonna be about AI powered marketing. And and ultimately speaking, it's just about how ai within your marketing program can help make you more efficient and how it can make you more bespoke within those environments.

And particularly that's Creative video solutions or conversational ad experiences or new customer acquisition goals. We're excited about the ways that it can make you more efficient, create dynamic creative in the moment. Many marketers don't have video assets that are already made for video environments.

Instead they have tv. We can facilitate that incredibly quickly and based on who your consumer is in that moment. So this idea that we can really help. Take some of the sort of admin burden out of what will feel like more personalized experiences, I think is where we're going.

And obviously this, most of that started with commerce. But given that the B2B buyer expects their experience to be just the same as a commerce experience. It is the same experience. There is no differentiation. We really need to lower the wall and perception that we should have a fundamentally different process.

Yep. And we're excited about the ways that. These tools can help find those clients with more predictive value and things of that nature through measurement.

Jon Busby: And of course, data's a key part of that as well. Data.

Therese Parkes: And if this wasn't another further plug, please start capturing first party data.

Jon Busby: The so we've got one question we're asking all of our guests, which is in five words, what advice would you give a future cma? To achieve success? Like, how would you, we've talked a lot around the 31 weeks for the buyer journey. 49% aren't in market. Did I get that right? 17 people at stakeholders in the buyer.

There's a lot to digest there. If you were to condense it down to five words, what would those five words be?

Therese Parkes: Marketing is the growth engine. You don't need to worry about the complexity because there are tools to solve for that. I think the greater challenge is the reticence and the legacy behavior that we have within these organizations.

So work with your partners to find ways to empower your conversations and understand that you as marketing have the single greatest view of the consumer for a given company. There is real power in that. But, So gone should be the days where you're relegated to being in service of any one other organization or sub-organization within the company.

You should have a seat at the table and and you need to work with the right partners to help you get there.

Jon Busby: That was an incredible answer. Will we see you again next year?

Therese Parkes: I was virtual in December. Yep. This is my first in person, but I would love to be back.