THE TECH MARKETING PODCHAT – Details, episodes & analysis

Declan Mulkeen lives in Spain and is an ABM expert. CMO at the strategicabm - the Account-based Marketing Agency, he also hosts the podcast 'Let's talk ABM'. Strategicabm partners exclusively with B2B tech brands to help them win, grow, and retain their most important accounts. 

So who better than Declan to talk ABM, right? 

We discussed the why and the how of planning and implementing successful ABM programs.
A few myths debunked:
- ABM is not = to B2B marketing or lead gen
- ABM is a strategy, not a marketing tactic
- ABM is not for everyone
- It's more an account based experience and goes beyond marketing

Enjoy our discussion!

Liam Boogar-Azoulay is an American marketer in Paris and also VP Marketing at Scaleway. A San Francisco native, he had to go to France to find the world of Tech! In 2011 he launched Rude Baguette - France's Startup Blog and went on to work at many successful tech companies like Algolia or MadKudu.
Scaleway is a leading European infrastructure cloud provider - the cloud that makes sense. 

Liam started at Scaleway only a few months ago so we shared experiences on joining fast growth tech companies recently and how to plan for success from day 1. We discussed building a marketing team for growth and making every team member accountable for revenue. Liam gave us the download on how his team is structured and how he makes sure to set clear OKRs for everyone so that they are all moving in the same direction and scaling fast. 

Anna Ålenius-Mathson is Director of Brand & Comms at Quinyx
Quninyx is a workforce management solution. Headquartered in Sweden, they are growing fast and now have offices across the globe.
Before joining Quinyx, Anna lead coms, PR and brand at several tech companies like Stratsys, Rebtel or Sinch. She's helped many companies go through a brand refresh or a rebrand.

And that's what we talked about!
Why do companies need to rebrand, what's the process, what's the most important part to get right, what's difficult about it?
We also discussed her role leading brand transformation from the inside and how you need to continue building a brand after the refresh, one campaign at a time. 

Anna Lämber is Senior Director, Marketing EMEA North, at ServiceNow.
ServiceNow is a cloud computing platform helping companies manage digital workflows for enterprise operations. Founded in 2004, ServiceNow is a massive success story - 14,000+ employees, 6,200+ customers, they serve ~80% of the Fortune 500.
Anna has been working in technology marketing for 20 years. 

We talked about her role and what it's like to work for such a large global, US-based tech company. While she drives a local marketing team larger than most Swedish SaaS startups', she also works very closely with the corporate marketing team at headquarters. We discussed some of the challenges that this presents, and how to manage differences between US and Europe. 

Ling Koay is CMO at Oneflow.
Oneflow offers an all-in-one e-contract platform with integrated e-signing tool. Ling is a passionate and energetic marketer who loves pushing boundaries. First a copywriter, she knows how to harness the power of copy and content for b2b tech companies.

We talked about her love for marketing, her passion for content and her approach to social media. She also believes our kids can teach us a lot about marketing!
We also discussed how she has been growing a world-class marketing team at Oneflow. As 2020 has been a challenging year for many companies and marketers, we looked into some of the learnings and what's coming for us in 2021.

Andy Culligan is CMO at Leadfeeder.
Leadfeeder is a b2b website tracking software - showing you the companies visiting your website, how they found you and what they’re interested in. Andy is on a mission to reinvent the word "alignment" between sales and marketing teams. A sales person stuck in a marketer's body (or a marketer in a sales body!), he is an expert in marketing and sales for SaaS companies with always the ultimate goal to drive pipeline success.

We talked, of course, about sales and marketing alignment and how to achieve it.
At the end of 2020, the B2B Institute by Linkedin published a report called 2030 b2b trends. They state that there are 2 types of marketing: Short-Term Activation and Long-Term Branding. And although short term activation has been the focus so far in b2b, this is changing and the winning companies will be the ones focusing on long term brand building. I asked Andy his thoughts about that report. We discussed Lead Gen vs Demand Gen and Demand Gen vs Brand. 

Carl Ronander is Head of Brand and PR at Mentimeter.
Mentimeter provides an interactive presentation and meeting software, allowing presenters to interact with their audience in real time. After more than 10 years as strategic planner and brand strategist in agencies, Carl made the move to working at Mentimeter about 2 years ago. 

We talked about one of my favorite subject: building a strong, brave b2b brand. Carl explained his role as head of brand and PR and what that entails. We discussed the differences between working on the agency side vs being the 'brand expert' in-house. We explored why it is important to build a strong brand when you're a b2b tech company and how to do it. We also discussed how you can measure the success of your brand building. 

Johanna Edepil is CMO at XMReality.
XMReality provides a Remote Guidance SaaS solution. "It's just like being there. Even if you're somewhere else." The perfect tool for our new remote life! 

We talked about the difficulties of entering the US market when you're an outsider (a small Swedish company) and the importance of really understanding the market before you try - companies often need to adjust their approach and messaging. We discussed the challenges of 2020 for b2b companies, like XMReality, who were relying on events to educate prospects. We talked about how XMReality used 2020 to focus on planning and redefining their marketing strategies. Sometimes you 'just' need to go back to basics!

Andres Sehr is CMO at Qred.
Qred, the fastest growing Fintech company in Sweden, is specialised in small business loans.
Before joining Qred to power up its expansion, Andres has worked in some of the best tech companies in Sweden - Skype, Spotify, TrueCaller, Hedvig - often as one of their first marketing hires.

We talked about marketing best practices for tech start ups, developing a hands-on customer approach and scaling up a company while in a pandemic. We discussed the perception of business loans for small businesses and the different challenges for Qred in different markets - from building a world class brand to localisation while expanding throughout Europe.

Mikko Luhtava is Head of marketing at Vainu.
Vainu is a software company that offers real time company data for sales and marketing. Mikko is a growth-driven, revenue-focused marketer with a strong background in sales. 

We talked about data-driven marketing and structuring a European marketing team for growth. We discussed the differences between doing sales in the Us vs Europe. We also talked about putting together the right marketing tech stack to run smooth multi-countries marketing programs.