The document summarizes responses from 19 B2B marketing leaders on how consumerization has changed their behaviors. Key insights include: focusing more on individual buyers and end users rather than just decision makers; simplifying marketing messages; increasing use of social media, mobile, and digital channels; emphasizing useful, shareable content; and shifting to more "pull" marketing approaches. Many noted the need to relate to customers on a human level and optimize experiences for consumer technologies.

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19 B2B Marketers:
One Question,
Many Insights

2.
The ongoing “consumerization of
B2B” has long been a passionate
conversation topic among marketers. As a
B2B marketer myself, I wanted to better
understand how B2B marketers were
perceiving this trend. I reached out to the
marketers in my network with a simple
question:
“How has the trend in
consumerization of B2B
changed your behaviors?”
Here’s what they had to say…
Margaret Molloy
Global CMO
Siegel+Gale

3. “Consumerization of B2B means
that purpose matters and requires
that we engage customers in a
dialog to turn them into brand
advocates.”
Nick Besbeas
VP, Marketing and Customer Support
LinkedIn
@nickbesbeas
Purpose Matters

4. “B2B marketers need to remember
that big glass buildings don’t buy
software, people do. We created
an initiative called ‘Humanize the
Brand’ that encourages and
enables SAP to communicate more
consistently, more simply, and in
ways that are more empathetic to
our customers.”
Jonathan Becher
CMO
SAP
@jbecher
Humanizing Brands

5. “The trend in consumerization has
guided us toward taking a new lens
on how we create content—always
asking ourselves ‘is this piece
providing something valuable and
actionable for the reader?’ We’re
continuously striving to produce
content that is informative,
educational, or provides our
audiences with tips and tools that
make their jobs easier.”
Margaret Molloy
Global CMO
Siegel+Gale
@MargaretMolloy
Provide Professional
Value

6. Customers must
become brand
advocates

7. “The biggest changes are
simplifying the message, a better
adherence to messaging and
positioning across the company,
and a broader use of social media
to communicate the message.”
Mark Wilson
SVP, Marketing
Blackberry
Simple, Integrated
Marketing

8. “The biggest change is the use of
measurement tools like attribution
modeling, which connect individual
person-level exposure to CRM
conversions to better understand
the ROI of advertising and
communications touchpoints.”
Randall Beard
Global Head of Advertising Solutions
Nielsen
@beardrs
Measurement Tools

9. “Terms like B2B and B2C are no
longer relevant—it is all about B2C.
Whether you are a CEO or a CPA,
you can be a consumer anywhere
and at anytime. And when you go
back to being a CEO or CPA, you
want the same always-on, simple
experience in your "B2B" world
since there is no longer a
distinction between what hat you
are wearing.”
Marty Homlish
EVP and CXO
HP
Consumer
Behavior

10. “Consumerization is changing the
tone and voice of ADP's brand in
multiple ways. It has not only
changed what we say, but whom
we talk to as we increasingly reach
end users and not just decision
makers through mobile and social
channels.”
Steven Hardy
VP, NAS and MNC Strategy and Marketing
ADP
@steevh
Tone + Voice

11. Marketing is
optimizing for the
technology of the
consumer

12. “My view of what’s ‘good enough’ for
the user experience has dramatically
changed. Products must be intuitively
designed, requiring an iterative design
approach. As well, 60% of the buyers
journey happens before sales team
engagement, so we need to focus on
answering buyers’ questions early on
in their journey. Overall, there’s been
a radical shift in emphasis from push
to pull marketing.”
Richard Campione
President, Cloud and Data Services
ServiceSource
@campione
UX + Pull Marketing

13. “We strive to get closer to the final
end user. Avoid jargon. Forge the
relationship. Create huge value for
the customer.”
Fred Niemeier
President, Energy and Fuels Marketing Group
IDEX Corporation
Forge Relationships

14. “As marketers, we don’t focus on
B2C or B2B—it’s about leveraging
technology to provide tailored
information and interacting
individually with customers and
prospects throughout their buyer
journey—that’s critical for
consumer purchases and for
complex technology decisions.”
Debbie Murphy
VP, Global Marketing
Zebra Technologies
@dhmurphy
Tailored Interactions

15. Produce helpful
content that makes
your customer’s job
easier

16. “The consumerization of IT
contributed to the convergence of
B2B and B2C to a path of B2i; the i
stands for an increasing number of
critical individuals that IT B2B
marketers have to market to with
B2C simplicity in order to gain and
sustain relationship permission.”
Eric-Jan Schmidt
VP, Global and Digital Marketing
Hitachi Data Systems
@EricJanSchmidt
Individuals

17. “The biggest impact of
consumerization of enterprise
technology has been on product
design and development, as well as
the advent of bottoms-up business
models. Inevitably, it has impacted
how we market our products with
increasing use of subscription-
based pricing and greater focus on
end user (vs. buyer) marketing to
drive adoption and usage.”
Rahul Sachdev
President and CEO
Get Satisfaction
@rahul_sachdev
End User Marketing

18. “B2B buyers are already
‘consuming’ information, just like
consumers. We’re embracing their
active role in the buying process by
developing shareable content and
stories.”
Steven Handmaker
CMO
Assurance
@handmaker
Sharable Content

19. Brands must relate to
their customers on a
human level

20. “The consumerization of B2B has
enabled Kofax to adopt a
consumer-driven positioning. We
have shifted budgets, embraced
customer versus product focused
messaging, and shaped our brand
voice to be more conversational
and provocative.”
Grant Johnson
CMO
Kofax
@grantejohnson1
Shifted Budgets

21. “The ubiquity and transparency of
information and data has made the
B2B consumer more informed and in
control. Marketing must adapt to
shorter buying cycles, faster reaction
times and increased non-traditional
competition. Influencing customers
along multiple channels in real time is
critical. In short B2B consumerization
has required marketing organizations
to move from push to pull centric.”
John Dragoon
EVP and CMO
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
@jkdragoon
More Pull, Less Push

22. “We are seeing the selling motion
move from a sales rep meeting
customers to a digitally driven
environment where customers’
preferences are already influenced
by online information prior to their
first encounter with a sales person.
This inflection requires our
marketing team to rely more heavily
on outside vendors with the latest
in technology and expertise to help
drive our marketing mix.”
Bob Braham
SVP and CMO
SGI
@bobbraham_sgi
Digital Drivers

23. Information and data
have empowered the
B2B consumer

24. “B2B marketing is finally recognizing
the relevancy of B2C consumerism.
For example, B2B’s growing
emphasis on personalization, search
optimization and sentiment
analysis.”
Gary Damiano
VP, Marketing
Veeva Systems
@GEDamiano
Personalization

25. “It has made marketing engage
more fully with the individual buyer,
versus the company persona.
Marketers are trying to appeal
more overtly to the people involved
in the buying cycle, leading
marketing to optimize for mobile
devices and the technology of the
consumer, rather than the
traditional desktop.”
Chris Boorman
Chief Marketing and Customer Success Officer
Huddle
@CHBoorman
Digital Drivers

26. “What do people exactly mean by
‘consumerization of B2B’? It's one
of those terms we invent or reinvent.
I'd say it was always there, it's just
that most B2B marketers were
previously focused on a lot of the
wrong things or not focused enough
on the right things.”
Shane Lennon
VP and CMO
Epiq Systems
@virtualCMO
Consumerization Isn’t
New

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Thanks to the 19 B2B marketing leaders
Now over to you…
“How has the consumerization of B2B changed your
behaviors?”
We’d love to hear from you.
Tweet me @MargaretMolloy
Margaret Molloy
Global CMO
Siegel+Gale

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Simple
is smart.
www.siegelgale.com