Megan Langley, VP of Marketing at Higher Logic shares more on why marketers today need to be more data driven:
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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Megan – tell us more about your marketing journey through the years and more about your role at Higher Logic Vanilla?
My marketing journey has been quite an evolution and began in business intelligence and analytics. I was drawn to how data could be used to make smarter, faster decisions. This seems ancient now, but I built a scorecard that weighted performance metrics to help decide where to spend the marketing dollars across different vendors. We had one digital marketer at the time, and she was able to manage millions of dollars, successfully, because of a spreadsheet. Once I could see the answers jump off the page, I was hooked.
The love of data provided many opportunities to support marketing teams and leaders. However, I reached a junction that for me to take the next step in my career, I needed to be directly responsible for a revenue target. Ever since then, I’ve been leading marketing efforts and driving growth at multiple software companies.
The SaaS world is always changing and evolving, but one constant has been the incredible people I’ve met along the way. The community tech industry has been nothing short of welcoming. Joining Higher Logic Vanilla, a platform that fosters community, felt like the perfect match. Here, I get to blend my passion for marketing with the power of community building to create the best experiences for our customers and prospects.
When driving a brand’s core marketing plan and strategy: what are the fundamentals and factors you usually focus on? Takeaways you’d share with new marketing entrants?
At the heart of it all, getting to know your target audience and their individual journeys is key. As marketing leaders, we need to dig deep into what makes our customer tick—their pain points, motivations, and behavior patterns. From there, you craft a compelling value proposition that aligns with the customer journey to guide your strategy.
For new marketers, I would stress the importance of being data-driven and agile. Test, iterate, and be willing to adapt quickly based on insights.
What are some of the biggest challenges in modern B2B marketing that most marketers have not been able to fix yet, despite all the martech they have access to?
One persistent challenge is achieving true personalization at scale. While MarTech offers powerful tools for segmentation and targeting, many marketers struggle to deliver genuinely personalized experiences across all touchpoints. Balancing automation with human touch remains a hurdle.
When it comes to proving ROI, the industry has made some progress, but it’s still an obstacle. Even with sophisticated analytics, attributing revenue to specific marketing activities can be complex. This is especially true in the B2B sector, where you need to consider growing buying committees, longer sales cycles and multiple touchpoints.
Take us through some of the martech that you’ve often relied on to power your marketing plans and goals?
A good marketing plan is only as effective as the revenue it drives. Any time I evaluate MarTech, I consider how it will strengthen the relationship and hand-off between sales and marketing.
Account-based marketing (ABM) and sales enablement platforms are prime examples of tools that bridge these two worlds. Marketing and sales teams can use ABM strategies to align their efforts in targeting and engaging high-value accounts, ensuring that marketing resources are invested in the most promising opportunities. Meanwhile, sales enablement platforms provide sales teams with the necessary tools, content, and insights to engage prospects and close deals, all while staying aligned with the overarching marketing strategy.
By leveraging these platforms, you can facilitate a smooth transition from marketing-generated leads to sales conversions, ultimately driving revenue and building a more cohesive relationship between the two teams.
Can you talk about the state of modern B2B marketing and martech and what trends will dominate the space in 2024?
People now seek transparency and authenticity from brands, more so than ever before. In 2024, AI and machine learning will play an even more significant role in marketing, particularly in areas like personalization and predictive analytics. AI is going to take the data that we have and allow us to act on it with precision, rather than the feeling in the dark like we often do now.
As intent data becomes more accessible and accuracy improves, ABM will continue to gain traction, enabling marketers to target high-value accounts with precision. Additionally, the rise of conversational marketing and chatbots will reshape how businesses engage with prospects and customers in real-time.
Higher Logic Vanilla is a cloud-based, online community platform that provides brands and organizations the ability to create a positive customer experience by combining the power of customer communities, discussion and Q&A, ideation, and knowledge base that strengthens relationships with customers, increases engagement and collaboration with peers, and provides self-service resources to shorten time to resolution – all while reducing support costs. Higher Logic Vanilla provides B2B customers the ability to create a branded community with advanced features including federated search, gamification, analytics and reporting, and integration capabilities.
Megan Langley is VP of Marketing at Higher Logic
