The Future Of Tech Marketing - TMG Conference 2023
Last week I headed to Auckland for the annual New Zealand Tech Marketers Group (TMG) Conference: The Future Of Tech Marketing.
Of all the tech events in NZ, this is the only one that brings together those people responsible for the marketing growth engine. I enjoyed the vibe of this, as it’s the one time when we get together with others who talk the same language and who understand the opportunities and challenges that come with the role.
Disclaimer - I am on the Executive Committee of TMG who organise the event, so might be a bit biased, but I love getting together with ‘my tribe’.
It’s always interesting when attending events to pick out consistent themes that weave their way through the day - key issues and opportunities that many speakers picked up on, even when they haven't coordinated their approach. It tells you the 'zeitgeist' of the day!
The key themes this year included:
Sales and marketing integration - absolutely vital for successful growth, but so often this is done poorly
Marketing IS business - the importance of marketing in driving the business; it's so much more than having good creative or marketing tactics
The importance of a clearly articulated strategy and vision. A good strategy, with everyone aligned in one direction will make an activity; no strategy will break it
AI (Artificial Intelligence) and who can go anywhere without talking about ChatGPT!
Here are my top highlights:
Ben Reid, Futurist
Ben’s a regular at the conference and normally brings a range of foresight insights to the audience. Such as the impact and pace of change in the AI arena, he chose to speak only on AI.
Ben demonstrated a number of tools - some amusing e.g. creating your face as a robot and some providing use-cases right now e.g.
ChatGPT for summarising documents, or helping with searches.
As well as ChatGPT, there’s a plethora of visual tools that are getting better and more usable. Things are moving so fast, that even in the areas which aren’t that great yet (people's hands and putting text in an image), I’m pretty confident that these will be usable in the next few months.
Text-to-voice and text-to-music are becoming popular, while text-to-video and text-to-3D imagery are also being developed.
Ben’s position is the value of AI + Human = increased productivity and I know I’m personally excited about the opportunities here.
On the other hand, how will we know if something is real or not? This is not an issue if you see a photo of the Pope in a puffer jacket, but is more of an issue if it’s a phishing attack.
What’s happening with our jobs? Will it be a disruption to how we do our jobs, or a wholesale change in society?
Ben also shared a funny argument between the AI-powered search engine Bing and someone asking for cinema times. Bing argued that it was still 2022 when it was 2023 and told the user they had to apologise and admit they were wrong. Funny to watch today, but it highlights the issue of AI being very certain, even when it’s wrong. As users, we may know the information we’re given is incorrect, but we may not.
Pat Spenner, The Challenger Sale
Pat’s session was a good reminder of the importance of the integration of sales and marketing.
The average customer is 60-90% of the way through their buying process before they engage with your company.
What’s more, as they go through their self-serve efforts, reading articles and identifying their buying needs, many of them are creating incorrect beliefs and assumptions about what they need.
What we need to do as businesses is make sure we have marketing content that’s of value and that educates the prospect and provides insights.
Pat talked about the Challenger Research which identified the importance of providing information and insights that help a business reframe the way it thinks about its own business in a way that leads uniquely back to the company.
He’s currently using this approach with Capital Preferences, where he is Head of Marketing & Strategy. He talked us through this as a case study of how their insights into investor behaviour are being used to help investment companies sell their products to their prospects through an enhanced understanding of their customers' needs.
Caroline Herrick, Strategic Narrative
Caroline started her presentation with a cringeworthy montage of advertising from the 70s and 80s for technology products and solutions (sexist, as well as throwback fashion), before going on to talk about the power of a strategic narrative.
The main point of her presentation was that there is a fundamental difference between a brand narrative which might be owned and crafted by marketing and a strategic narrative which has to be owned by the CEO.
A strong strategic narrative can mobilise your business, articulating strategy and aligning teams to a common purpose and is a powerful tool for differentiation in the market.
I think this can be a big differentiator between a hugely successful company that is aligned behind a single purpose. It might be up to the CEO to own and communicate this initially, but I don't think it has to be a solitary act of creation. I think it is important however, that the CEO takes the lead and really, truly lives and breathes it at all opportunities/
Panel Session, Growing Great Marketers
I MC'd this session and am including this as a highlight as it is an area I am really passionate about. I had a fantastic group of panellists who engaged the audience and kept the questions coming.
We’d chatted beforehand and identified key 5 themes which we touched on:
Knowing whether you want to be a leader or not
Having a good support team
Humility - you don’t needs to know all the answers
Building a team culture
Developing leadership skills
Thanks so much to Fiona Cresswell from Fisher and Paykel Healthcare, Sophie Stanley from Bounsa micro-mentoring and Ronish Ricky Kumar, AUT student, lecturer, head of the AUT Marketing Club and all round representative of the entire Gen Z population!
There were heaps more highlights of the event - the quality of the speakers was excellent; I enjoyed catching up with my tech marketing whanau and it was fantastic to see the winners of the inaugural TMG Tech Marketing Awards - congratulations to you all:
Nick Whitehead, Chief Marketing Officer for Serko, was awarded NZ’s Tech Marketer of the Year
Kat Waters, Marketing Manager at ElementX, an AI development agency, was awarded the NZ Young Tech Marketer of the Year
Bindy Griffin and the team at LawVu were awarded the NZ B2B Marketing Strategy of the Year