Name: The MQL is Dead: Why and How to Focus on Buying Groups
Start: 2022-09-29T13:00:00Z
End: 2022-09-29T13:01:04.000Z
Location: BrightTALK
Rating: 4.9

Marketing experts share tips and best practices for achieving success with email, social media, demand generation, mobile marketing and other trending topics.

Part of what makes creating great content so challenging for marketers is the need to continuously engage and excite buyers. Finding new story ideas within the confines of a market, topic or product can feel near impossible – and failed attempts often result in decreased engagement. Similarly, journalists are constantly on the hunt for their next story or angle within the confines of their beat. What if there was a way to shift our thinking from merely creating to discovering compelling stories, much like a journalist does? 

In this episode of B2B Content Brilliance, Fiona O’Connor (Sr. Manager, Informa TechTarget) sits down with Bridget Botelho (Editorial Director, News Department, Informa TechTarget) to learn more about a journalist’s approach to finding stories and how B2B marketers can adopt a similar mindset to elevate their content, drive more engagement and convert buyers.

Think Like a Journalist: Finding Great Story Ideas

According to a Forrester survey, 85% of marketers using intent data see results. However, as their demand engine grows, so can the potential challenges evolve and change. Whether it's struggling to reach the right audience, delivering content that resonates, or boosting brand visibility, these roadblocks can hinder ROI and slow growth if not addressed. With 2025 approaching, now is the time to tackle these challenges and fine-tune your demand generation strategy for the new year. 

Join Kristin Prosowski, VP of Products (TechTarget), as she reveals the key aspects of demand generation strategy that shouldn't be overlooked, whether you’re building for 2025 or beyond.  Get the tools you need to solve the day-to-day marketing challenges you are seeing now and head into the new year with a foundational GTM strategy that combines TechTarget’s content, intent, and audience offerings to drive real demand.

Assembling Your Demand Gen Toolbox for 2025

“Quality might not always be the right answer, but it’s always the right question.” As B2B buyers’ hunger for video content continues to grow, many marketing teams are looking for better ways to fuel their video content engine – and, often, the search for quality is a driving force. Yet there are other factors to consider in the quest to create video content that meets your objectives, whether you’re creating video in house or looking for a partner to fill the gaps.

Join Susan Smith and Jeff Kunken (Informa TechTarget) and BrightTALK's Greg Johnson as they discuss how video quality and content goals intersect and what you need to know to choose the right video services. They’ll tap into decades of combined experience to share how to set the right objectives for your video content and set your team up for success. Plus, they’ll break down different types of video services and budgeting strategies, how a good vendor compares to a true partner, and when to engage them.

The Quality Question: Vendors, Partners and Understanding Your Video Objectives

Quick: you only have seconds to capture a buyer’s attention. What story do you tell? That’s the challenge facing marketers today. In a noisy marketplace, how can you create content that makes your brand stand out in less time than it takes to microwave a burrito? 

Join BrightTALK's production experts as they take you behind the scenes with The Studio, the webinar series pulling back the curtain on B2B production in the marketing world. In this episode, we’re sharing best practices for using video and animation to maximize your social media strategy. From managing the classic “thought leadership” vs. “sales-y” tightrope to developing modular content that can go the distance, our experts will share plenty of tips and tricks to help you stop the scroll.

Video that Clicks: Creating Content for B2B Social Media

When it comes to B2B video content production, design and marketing folks often throw around the saying, “perfection is the enemy of progress.” But when we think about visual content, great execution goes hand-in-hand with success. Creators must then find a way to balance quality with scale, amidst the pressures of limited time and budget.  

In this webinar, join Fiona O’Connor (Sr. Manager, TechTarget) and Ben Hillman (Executive Producer, Paddle) as they discuss the realities of B2B video production and what it takes to create great videos. Discover how Ben and his team at Paddle build high-quality content to attract and engage their target audience, so you can bring these tactics into your own video program to generate real ROI, no matter your budget.

Perfection vs. Scale: Achieving Balance in B2B Video Production

If you’re a content marketer, you can probably relate to that feeling of being on a hamster wheel – focused and working hard but knowing the pace is unsustainable – and needing to find an off ramp. You’re under pressure to keep your content fresh, generate content in different formats, personalize content for target buying teams, or just generate more and more assets. Or maybe you’re challenged to come up with new ideas and topics that will resonate with your audience. You (rather quickly) surmise that you don’t like being a hamster.

With all the hype around artificial intelligence, you’re probably wondering if generative AI (GenAI) can solve your content creation problems. However, many B2B tech buyers are wary of AI-generated content and, in response, are leaning into expert-authored content. So, if AI isn’t the panacea (and you don’t want to be a hamster), how do you get a sustainable stream of the right content to engage your target audience and move them swiftly to a decision to purchase your solution?

In this episode of our B2B Content Brilliance series, Lauren Whitehouse (Enterprise Strategy Group) and Susan Smith (TechTarget) talk about “classic” content – its characteristics, why you need it and how to create it for each stage of the buyer’s journey. They’ll look at the role of subject matter experts in creating this type of content and how it can make your content engine more efficient.

Classic is Cool: Lessons in Content Marketing

A great presenter can elevate a brand faster than almost anything else, but identifying the right speakers can be difficult for even the most experienced program planners. Plus, once you've identified your perfect presenter, how do you even get them on board?

In this episode of BrightTALK’s Build a Better Webinar series, we’ll dive into all things speaker recruitment. From identifying and cultivating both internal and external presenters to templates for making and tracking your requests, we’ll cover everything you need to build and maintain a bench of expert talent.

Build a Better Webinar: Recruiting Speakers

The webinar. It’s the bread and butter of any marketing campaign that educates prospects effectively and moves them down the sales funnel. But in a world where B2B professionals consume and participate in video experiences daily, “talking heads” won’t make your content stand out. How can marketers create webinars that grab—and keep—the attention of the people they need to engage?  

Join BrightTALK's production experts as they take you behind the scenes with The Studio, the webinar series pulling back the curtain on B2B production in the marketing world. In this episode, we’ll talk about strategies big and small that marketers can use to differentiate their webinar content. From speaker coaching and up-leveling production quality to smarter storytelling and distribution tactics, our experts will share plenty of tips to help you create webinars worth watching.

How Can I Make My Webinars...Not Boring?

In this edition of B2B Content Brilliance, TechTarget CMO John Steinert is joined by Chief Creative Officer Victoria Azarian (Cannes Lions, Effie, One Show). One look at her work and you’ll understand why it’s accelerated millions of dollars (and likely billions) in value for clients and for their customers.  

Our latest strategic session in this series examines the importance (and challenges) of using graphic design to help successfully communicate promises of value. The goal is to aid marketing and business leaders like you in identifying substantive design gaps and the impediments standing between where you are and where you want to be. We look to help you better recognize these, consider them, and articulate them to other leaders towards successful implementation of business-critical improvements.

Good Design is Good for Business

It’s amazing to realize that Forrester research shows Millennials and Gen Zers made up 71% of B2B buying teams in 2023. What’s more, their clear preference for video-based content means that in your content portfolio, video is absolutely critical as a source of information for B2B decision making and vendor selection. And our own research shows clearly that busy executives are also consuming more video: Across tech buyers, 48% say webinars and 31% say video are the most important media formats they use to build a vendor shortlist. Suffice to say that in the absence of a good video-based content strategy, marketers will struggle to capture these buyers’ attention, get on their short list and influence their purchasing decisions.  

In the next episode of B2B Content Brilliance in Action, join Jeff Kunken (Vice President Integrated Solutions, TechTarget) and Susan Smith (Senior Director, Product Marketing, TechTarget) as they discuss how to design effective video-based content and overcome common impediments to creating a successful video-based content strategy. Jeff will draw from his experience at the Sundance Channel and IconicTV and share examples of how BrightTALK’s Studios team develops compelling video, webinars and virtual events for our customers. You’ll walk away with practical tips on how to create a library of effective video content, within your budget and timeframe, that successfully engages buyers and communicates your solution’s value.

Drive Better Buyer Engagement with Video

These days there's no shortage of suppliers promising to build your brand, generate pipeline and alert you to the accounts who are in market for your solutions. But not all providers are created equal. In this panel discussion, we’ll arm B2B tech marketing and sales professions with an understanding of the landscape of potential partners across Asia Pacific. 

By attending this interactive discussion, you’ll learn,
  - The tactics commonly taken to derive intent for your offerings
  - How different types of providers generate leads for you
  - Ways to create local content that meets the information needs of buyers in region
  - Whether low cost always equates to low quality
  - The questions you should ask to ensure you’re evaluating potential partners properly

Panelists include:
  - Del Robles, Director, Media and Digital Activation, Just Global (Singapore)
  - Marcelo Loustau, VP, Growth Marketing and Demand, APAC, MOI-Global (Singapore)
  - Amadeus Guerrero-Pou, VP of APAC Sales, TechTarget (Sydney)
  - Jon Panker, Managing Director APAC, TechTarget (Sydney)

Making Sense of the APAC Media and Data Landscape

SonicWall is a well-established leader in the cybersecurity space. With over 30 years of experience detecting threats and protecting organizations of all sizes, the SonicWall team’s expertise and solutions are relied upon across the globe for boundless cybersecurity defense. And with threats on the rise due to a variety of factors, SonicWall’s marketing team has laser-focused on a content strategy that effectively educates and engages the right IT professionals.

Join this live session to hear how SonicWall’s Stacy Horton, Sr. Marketing Manager, Demand Generation, has tapped into the power of webinars to create engagement with target accounts, drive better sales-ready conversations and fuel more pipeline. We’ll delve into best practices for B2B webinar content creation and showcase the real impact it can have on brand awareness, lead generation and customer relationship nurturing. Discover how SonicWall’s strategic investments in webinar content have driven their marketing efforts and delivered measurable return on investment.

Winning with B2B Webinars: SonicWall's Content Marketing Playbook

Revenue development was conceived as a way to leverage one-to-many capabilities into more productive opportunity discovery. At its center, there was the concept of the MQL — which was easy for management to understand and track. So, we’ve all tried to find more and more MQLs, even though they’re now proven to be notoriously poor predictors. There has to be a better way! But with all the KPIs, systems and processes locking us in, change can be very hard. And yet for many companies, it’s starting to look like a must.

To learn from a leader who’s broken through, join TechTarget CMO John Steinert as he speaks with Michael Brown, head of Reltio’s Global Revenue Development organization. Hear why this world-class Master Data Management company needed to make the move past MQLs to buying groups and opportunities, how they accomplished it organizationally and systematically, and what their outcomes are to date. This transition that they accomplished in 60 days won Reltio a prestigious POY Award at this year’s Forrester Summit in Austin. It’s a must see for innovative GTM practitioners and leaders alike.

Demand Evolution: From Leads with Problems to Teams with Projects

A recent Enterprise Strategy Group survey found that 53% of IT professionals view IT as more complicated than it was two years ago. With an increase in remote work, a rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape and a rise in the number of endpoint devices, many are turning to joint solutions to decrease complexity. And it is the role of strategic alliance and partner marketing teams to understand the evolving IT buying journey and to supply the right insights and content to aid the decision-making process.

Join Michael Latchford, General Manager & Vice President, Strategic Alliances & Partner Marketing Services of TechTarget as he sits down with partner marketing executives Laurie Mitchell of Wasabi, Meaghan Moore of ServiceNow, and Amy McNew of Palo Alto Networks as they discuss adoption drivers for integrated solutions, content strategy best practices and tactics for successfully fueling the IT buyer’s journey. You’ll also walk away with freshly unveiled research from Enterprise Strategy’s Groups survey on integrated partner solutions.

Guiding the IT Buying Journey: Strategies for Partner Marketing

Generative AI is going to be an effective tool for ramping up content volumes, but volume and impact are very different. All marketers need to be able to differentiate their solutions and align them better to customer needs or else a buyer won’t engage. Sellers need to maximize relevance and minimize noise in their interactions. Therefore, in order to have more effective marketing and sales, AI needs to help GTM organizations better understand what buyers want and need and then provision them with content based on the best possible insight.

Join TechTarget's VP of AI Strategy Paul Healey and VP of Content and Market Insights Ryan Bell, as they discuss what good personalization looks like and how TechTarget is envisioning the best way to help sellers and buyers alike using AI.

AI and Content: The Advantage is in the Data

It is the best of times and the worst of times. Despite more and more tools available to sales, the gap between potential productivity and actual productivity is rapidly widening. To make matters worse, direct buyer engagement is down significantly since COVID. But fear not, help is on the way. The emergence of generative AI, fueled by precision intent data and other data sources, promises to raise sales performance and increase productivity in dramatic ways. Whether you’re super-excited about the possibilities, somewhat scared for your job, or straddling the fence, it’s a session not to be missed.

Join Tech Target and guest speaker, Forrester Principal Analyst Seth Marrs as he describes key areas where he sees AI-driven innovation catalyzing positive change for sellers, buyers and their companies alike. He’ll outline the existing challenges, highlight the building blocks in place, and comment on the current status of change.

3 Ways AI is Revolutionizing B2B Sales

Although many go-to-market teams conceptually understand that the buying journey is far from linear, many struggle to adapt their strategies to the realities of today’s technology buying cycle. As purchase cycles increase in complexity and involve more buying team members, vendors need to ensure their marketing campaigns are aligned to buyers’ varying needs and that their sales teams are engaging the right members of the buying team at the right time with the right message.

VMware Tanzu is ahead of the curve when it comes to aligning marketing and sales activity to the non-linear buying cycle. With a laser-focus on real, observed behavioral activity, they’ve implemented a tech stack that supports their need to identify in-market accounts, engage individual buying team members and measure long-term results. TechTarget’s Christina Stone will sit down with Heidi Ramich, VMware Tanzu’s Director, Global Marketing Operations & Analytics, to discuss how the enterprise technology buying team has evolved, the importance of tapping into intent signals in a longer buying cycle, and the role of marketing in helping to make the "short list" for vendor selection. By the end of the webinar, participants will have a better understanding of how to leverage TechTarget and other key components of their tech stack to help get noticed in the non-linear buying journey.

How VMware Tanzu Aligns its Tech Stack to the Non-Linear B2B Buying Pattern

If we stay in our lane as marketers, succeeding at omnichannel marketing could seem like the key to reaching your strategic goals. And yet, especially in B2B, no business can succeed on great marketing alone. And while it’s always good to be laser-focused on our own specific functional tasks, especially in these days of digital interaction and data-driven automation, driving major improvements often requires a broader outlook or more holistic mindset. That’s why we believe today’s most competitive teams need to see beyond concepts like omnichannel delivery. And as an ambitious marketer, you should consider thinking this way too.

In this discussion between Terminus co-founder and GTM Partners CEO Sangram Vajre and TechTarget CMO, John Steinert, we’ll examine the learnings each leader has gained as they’ve built out their businesses and their thinking, from laser-focus at the start to the holistic GTM approaches they are actively championing today.

What’s After Omnichannel? How to Think Holistically About Performance

Modern Demand Strategies for Maximizing Opportunities in Today's Market

How Hitachi Vantara Books More Meetings with an Adaptive Demand Gen Strategy

Multi-Threading: How Sales Acts on Buying Teams

The ABCs of Webinar Lead Generation

Redefining the Role of Digital Advertising in Demand and ABM

How ActZero.ai Creates More Pipeline with a Proactive Content Strategy

The Neuroscience of Memorable Content

The Intersection of Your Brand, Reputation and Sales Results

Using Audience Insights to Drive Value at Scale

Content Strategy As Competitive Advantage In 2023

Fuel Your GTM with Credible, Data-Driven Content

Building Demand Gen is Still a People Business

How a B2B Marketing Service Provider Helps Clients Adopt ABM and Adapt to Intent

Adopting and Leveraging Intent: Lessons from Thousands of Users

Moving Beyond Activity: Increase your Focus on Quality Interactions and Yield

Intent Monitoring for Strategic Purposes

Using Intent Data to Improve ABM Outcomes

Reach 2022: Intent. Content. Demand.

The IT B2B Marketer vs. The IT Pro:  Does Buyer Perception Mirror Reality?

Intent Data in Action Across APAC: 5 Use Cases You Should Know

Cut Through the Noise: Content Preferences in a Digital World

Deepening Executive Engagement: Accelerating Demand with C-Suite Connections

How B2B Technology Buyers Actually Buy: The Changing Purchasing Dynamic in APAC

Historically, classic demand gen approaches, like marketing qualified leads (MQLS) and BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) have been at the center of how marketing organizations evaluate their effectiveness. Yet as buyers have changed – both in the number of purchasing decision makers and buying journeys overall – these approaches have not evolved to match the needs of the current B2B landscape. The result? Marketing and sales teams are leaving money on the table.

In this session, Terry Flaherty, VP, Principal Analyst at Forrester will discuss where these classic demand gen approaches fail and why they may be limiting your teams’ actual revenue potential. You’ll hear recommendations on what changes in thinking need to be made with Marketing organizations and how teams can begin to implement those changes.

The MQL is Dead: Why and How to Focus on Buying Groups

Content Marketing

Demand Generation

B2B Marketing

Marketing Analytics

Marketing and Sales Alignment

Buyer Cycle

Buyer Journey

Buyer Personas

Digital Transformation

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Social Media Marketing

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Marketing Operations and Automation

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Online Advertising

Get powerful marketing insights for your business. Connect with experts and colleagues to get the most up-to-date knowledge on which marketing strategies and techniques are driving customer and revenue growth.

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Advertising

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The MQL is Dead: Why and How to Focus on Buying Groups

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