Building a B2B Challenger Brand

Narrator: Welcome to B2B needs. Don Draper, brought to you by Tru. For too long, B2B has lacked creativity and inspiration, leading to alarming declines in effectiveness and marketing departments being slowly devalued more and more within their organizations. We're here to change that by getting under the skin of what it really means to be a highly effective B2B marketer. We'll be speaking to some of the brightest minds in the industry to discuss, discuss what they're doing to be a bit more well, Don Draper. Now to our host, Nathan anibaba.

Nathan Alibaba: Welcome to B2B. NIST on Draper, the show that's about turning B2B marketing into an art form. Don Draper style. I'm your host, Nathan Alibaba, and today we're speaking with Sumi Shukla, the Vice president of marketing at Riverbed Technology. Sumi has played a pivotal role shaping the strategies and visions of technology brands. Riverbed, known for its solutions in network performance monitoring, application performance management and wide area Networks, benefits from SUNY's deep understanding of the tech industry. Her role at Riverbed has seen her, huh, leading initiatives that span across various critical areas like brand amplification, demand and opportunity creation, customer marketing programs, key events and account based marketing on a global scale. So, Sumi shukla, welcome to B2B.

Sumi Shukla: Nista Andrepa, thank you so much. Thanks for inviting me. It's great to be here.

Nathan Alibaba: Super excited to have you on the show, Simi. So, first question that we ask all of our guests, what does being a bit more Don Draper mean to you?

Sumi Shukla: Oh, my goodness. Straight in with a tough question. So I'm a massive, um, Mad Men fan. It's a show that I loved. I actually binge watched it whilst on, uh, maternity leave, um, many, many years ago.

Nathan Alibaba: Right.

Sumi Shukla: Um, Don Draper. Ah, what a character he was. Right. I mean, there are certain traits that I really wouldn't wish to emulate. Um, he was a little misogynistic, you know, I think he was probably of that era, but there were some certain, I think, foundational things that you can take away from what he did. For example, what he did really well was understanding his audience and who he was pitching to. He took the time to research and make sure that he understood what the pain points and the challenges were of the customer or the client he was going in to meet. And he took care and pride in making sure that he actually delivered the best pitch possible. And I think that's what captivated us as an audience, just seeing what he was going to come up with next. Um, because he was so creative. But I think there was that foundational element there which was really knowing your, your audience. Um, so I think, yeah, if there's one thing, it'd probably be that, that's,

Nathan Alibaba: that's a really good jumping off point for the rest of the conversation, knowing, knowing your audience. Because it feels as though Riverbed is, is considered a challenger brand, uh, especially compared to a lot of the industry giants like Cisco and Dell. So maybe you can spend a few minutes maybe telling us a little bit about Riverbed for those that don't know. And what, what dimensions are you exploring to sort of compete effectively in such a competitive market where you've got such established players like Cisco and Dell?

Sumi Shukla: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, Riverbed we are, for those who don't know us, we are a B2B technology company. We operate globally across, you know, all three kind of geographies. Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific. And as you mentioned in your intro, we're a leader in optimization, um, and also a newer market for us, which is observability. So we've been around for about 20 odd years as a company and like many technology companies, we're constantly having to pivot and, and transform. So we started off as very much a dominant player in the networking arena, and now, yes, we're very much a challenger in this new observability market. And as a challenger, uh, we know that we can outmarket or, you know, out message some of the larger competitors that, you know, you just mentioned. But what is important for us is that we know our target audience and they know who we are and what we do and how we can help them. So knowing that and thinking about the customer and people that we're truly targeting, the question around, what are some of the dimensions that we're exploring to compete? Um, it's really made us focus on key foundational things. And you know, one of the key mantras that I like to sort of build, uh, off is we should be going where our customers go. Right? So wherever your customers are, take your brand and your story there. So that means, you know, we've had to implement a very kind of customer centric approach, um, to how we actually try and compete, um, with, with some of those big players. And it's, it's really focused on three things, Nathan. The first is really around again, understanding your audience. Going back to kind of Don Draper. Who are you really targeting? Right? Who are the Personas thinking about their journey as kind of our second pillar. What's their journey? How do they get to you what's their journey online and offline, so you can basically target them a lot more effectively. And the third kind of aspect or pillar for us has been researching and really listening what's top of mind for your customers and your target Personas. What are their challenges, their pain points. Really trying to understand who they are and build that picture will really help us shape our content and how we show up to actually being able to compete with some of those larger players in our market. That's actually led to a bit of a mindset shift internally, I have to say. We've had to pivot a lot of our thinking as well. Um, and, you know, it's also led to us thinking about what channels are we showing up in, right. How can we optimize that mix, um, of channels? So, you know, we've implemented new initiatives which, um, you know, really focus on the customer, you know, the voice of the customer, power of community, things like that. Leveraging our existing investments as well in online marketing, things like that. So we've really tried to focus on becoming a lot more customer centric, um, in our approach in order to kind of compete with some of those big players. Might not be groundbreaking for a lot of our listeners, but for us, you know, doing those foundations and the basics, um, well, you know, needs to be in place if we, if we want to compete effectively.

Nathan Alibaba: I couldn't agree more. I think so many of the foundational basic elements are just missed in a lot of B2B marketing. I think a lot of people consider them as quite boring or just traditional. But actually, I think the nuts and bolts of understanding who your customer is and focusing on your superfans so you're able to serve them the right content at the right time, um, in the right way, I think is vastly underrated, actually. Talk to me about channels because you said having such a clear understanding of who your customer is and what they want is clearly crucial. And then that allows you to think very differently about channels, how you reach them. And I think in B2B now we have got so many more channels with which to reach our target audience than we had before. You know, we've got such a much bigger canvas with which to paint, uh, tv, direct mail, direct, uh, response, podcasts, um, go down the list. There's, there's just so many more things, um, that we can use to target our audience. What channels have been really exciting to you recently? Considering that most B2B brands traditionally use events and email as their main channels to sort of, sort of go to

Sumi Shukla: market yeah, so um, no, it's a, it's a great question. And you're right, you know, we are lucky I guess in this day and age that we have many avenues open to us. One of the channels we did focus quite heavily on was video. Now our research showed that our customers, more than any other role within our company, trust our technical experts. Not sales, sadly, or even us in marketing. Um, it's our technical experts, they trust them. So using one of our awesome SES as the face of a new series, we started to produce, um, short two minute long episodes talking through key challenges and use cases in our industry. And these have gone down a storm. We're promoting them online and actually um, you know, we're promoting them through our campaigns as well and through our digital advertising. But we're also seeing a really nice kind of halo effect to this because you know, whilst we had produced this as an intention for our uh, you know, customers, we're also seeing our own uh, employees truly getting behind this and like proudly sharing their colleagues videos on their social channels too. So we're getting even more reach than we'd kind of anticipated. It's quite nice from an internal perspective as well. And equally we devised this series with Amia in mind. You know, that was my kind of focus area before I took on a broader role. But again, you know, social media sees no boundaries. Right. So it's being picked up across our teams globally which is really, really nice. So video is one we've really kind of thrown ourselves to. We're now going to start producing another video series aimed at more senior titles within our target audience. Much more kind of thought leadership, um, based. So yeah, in terms of channels of course we're, you know, we're still looking at the traditional um, routes but video is one another one that we've, we've really looked at is, is advocacy. And I, I don't just mean customer advocacy but employee advocacy. I kind of touched on it there. But we're also implementing like a social selling program for our customer facing teams. Many people don't really recognize the reach and the power that you know, social media can kind of give you, especially our salespeople. And you know, we really want to move away from just resharing company content to uh, allowing them to express their own views and opinions and thoughts. Um, so a social selling program is another one that we, we're looking at. So those are a couple of channels as well as kind of pr that's still a key, key pillar for us. But you know, we were probably disproportionately focusing on, on thought leadership and pr, um, alongside some of these, these other, you know, much more current and um, engaging avenues.

Nathan Alibaba: So it's interesting hearing you talk about the use of, of video and I could definitely see why that's, why that's working for you. A lot of technology brands lean into video and a lot of the content tends to be quite product based. It tends to be quite rational, um, messaging. How much of the content that you're thinking about putting out has been rational versus more sort of emotive uh, content. And how do you think about rational messaging versus emotion anyway in your wider communications?

Sumi Shukla: Yeah, and it's really, that's a really fascinating question because um, the videos that we have produced so far have been very product and use case centric. So much more kind of rational in that respect. Um, that's because our target Personas for those videos are the users of our products. That doesn't mean that they won't benefit from any other type of communication or messaging. But again just coming back to our strategy which is thinking about the customer journey as well. These particular videos were produced very much kind of mid to bottom of funnel. So you know we're targeting those that already are researching and have a specific need for what we're talking about. So you know they have been very sort of rational um, in those, in the videos that we've produced. Moving forward, as I mentioned, you know we're looking at additional um, videos and um, also we're looking at other um, channels as well. Blogging is one of those that we've also just now recently pivoted and re, uh engineered for us. Um, you know again our blogs were extremely rational. You know they're very much driven from our uh, wonderful product marketing team and really there to serve, you know, how our products help our customers. However, what we've done is in emea, you know we looked at blogs as a, as a great vehicle for us, you know, thinking about other channels. But we brought in a completely different flavor to it. So much more of a local feel in emea. Again leveraging our wonderful technical experts but asking them to talk about things like events that they're going to and perspectives that they've seen, trends and a meeting that they may have attended that's thrown up something that they hadn't perhaps thought about, um, other kind of challenges or you know, things that are probably less rational, much more perhaps opinion driven or um, emotive in that respect. We've kind of tried to bring our local blogging program to life by, you know, sharing some of those thoughts and perspectives and really supplementing the blogs that we see from our corporate team that are much more kind of, uh, product driven. So yeah, it's, it's a fascinating one because I think it's always a challenge as a technology company to get that right mix, um, because you think, you know, you want to promote your products whenever you can and you want to promote how they help and um, you know, the use cases around it. But it is very important as well to, to bring in perspectives and your own kind of views and opinions, you know, and also just a very tactical thing on our blogs. You know, we're producing them in different languages and in different countries and again, not earth shattering or groundbreaking, but a lot of technology companies just churn out English blogs from the us um, so yeah, we're just trying to, you know, trying to reach as many of our customers as we possibly can with some of our approaches. Yeah,

Nathan Alibaba: the last time that we spoke, I think you mentioned that you were spending probably a little bit too much on PR and rational communication. And it feels as though just going back to the competitors that we talked about earlier, dell and Cisco, etc. It feels as though that's what those guys do particularly well. And probably they could probably outspend you when it comes to, when it comes to that, um, to get a larger share of voice. Is there anything different or unique that you're, that you're doing to sort of stand out from the crowd, um, when it comes to kind of rational versus more emotive communications? And what I mean by that is, you know, is there a split in your mind that you have between investment in brand comms versus kind of bottom of the funnel, more demand, demand based stuff, um, 60, 40, 70, 30. Is there a split in your mind when you think about kind of rational versus more, uh, emotive communications?

Sumi Shukla: Um, no, I wouldn't necessarily say I'm thinking about budgetary split or um, how much we invest. It really does come back to that strategy and the journey that we're trying to take our customers on. And doing that piece of work which was actually done a few years ago and we actually do want to revisit it, which was our customer journey map was really eye opening for us, you know how. And it's really, it's fascinating because um, what it showed us was also they called it calories. The amount of calories we spend or we, whatever um, use to bring on a new customer was complete, was probably like 80% and then the amount of calories we used to actually retain a customer was like 20%. So a lot of effort and investment is going into. Yeah, I loved that as well. Um, you know, it was spent in actually trying to bring in a new customer and, you know, thinking about how you're actually going to get them to purchase. And less was actually spent on actually trying to retain that customer. So it does come down to that whole journey and that whole kind of strategy that you're deploying. So what do we do with that information? Um, and yes, you're right, uh, a lot of time and effort was spent on rational and pr, as you mentioned. But thinking about the bottom of that journey, or now the traditional marketing funnel, which was kind of like an inverted pyramid, we all know it's become more of, uh, an hourglass now with thinking about how you retain customers. We actually implemented some specific intentional programs to try to drive our customers on that journey to advocacy with us as well. So not just thinking about, you know, engaging them at the top end of the funnel, um, through, you know, some of these new channels and new tactics, taking them through to demand and getting our demand programs operating in our account based programs, but also, you know, once our sellers, we pass those great leads on or we're working hand in hand with our sellers, what do you do next? You know, you don't just kind of like wash your hands and go on to the next. And that's traditionally what we have been doing. So thinking about how do you take them to becoming true fans of your product has also been, um, something that we've really thought about. And thinking about, you know, community building, trying to drive advocacy initiatives, thinking about reviews and things like that as well, have been part of our strategy as well, of how we kind of pivot and orientate, um, the whole mix across that whole journey.

Nathan Alibaba: Why do you think when we reach a certain level as B2B marketers, so many of us tend to revert to the mean and try not to be brave and distinctive and, and stand out. What can be done about it?

Sumi Shukla: So, I mean, why do B2B marketers revert? Um, I don't think it's because we're not brave. I think we're very fortunate in our industry to have some highly talented, highly creative, um, marketeers. I would say that it probably comes down to perhaps internal challenges, dare I say it. Um, you know, a lot of the times we're given budgets that are quarterly or half yearly and we have pipeline goals and other goals to hit for to show that you know, the value, if you like, of marketing. So, you know, sadly, it doesn't often give us the breathing space that we need to really channel some of that creativity. Um, because you're often just planning and you're executing and you're moving from activity to activity. And now we hear about marketing becoming more of a science these days with all the AI tools and, uh, marketing tools out there, and there's a constant cadence of reviewing performance. It would be awesome if technology companies were able to give their marketing teams that bandwidth as well, to just take a step back sometimes and just think about some of those bigger things.

Nathan Alibaba: As you look around B2B marketing today, what brands really inspire you? I want to widen it out. Uh, not just B2B, even consumer brands. You know, what, what brands do you look at with envy and go, I wish, I wish we could borrow some of their magic or fairy dust. What brands or campaigns come to mind that really inspire you in B2B?

Sumi Shukla: So I think in B2B, I think Salesforce, I think what they've done from a brand standpoint is, is phenomenal. I'd also say, um, companies that perhaps are less known, but have really cultivated a bit of a following and a fan base for Riverbed, and a company of our size, you know, we know we're never going to compete with the Salesforces or the Cisco, but there are some organizations that, you know, we, we do compete with that have an army of very loyal users. And how they've done that is also very inspiring to companies like us. Splunk, for example, is one. I mean, Cisco just recently, um, acquired them. But you know that they're a great example of having a very loyal, um, user base and, you know, building true communities. You know, there was a. I think they're very famous for their T shirts as well. So they, they built off that, didn't they? And, um, you know, really kind of focused on, on their T shirts. But again, that's what worked for, for their audience and, um, and their users. There's a lot of good work happening out there in our industry. And I think, you know, it's about, as marketing leaders as well. It's just about keeping your eye out of the window and seeing what other people are doing. Not necessarily, um, you know, looking with envy, but also looking with true curiosity as to why are you doing that and how are you doing that and how can, how can we also try and emulate some of your, your success? So, yeah, I mean, in terms of campaigns, you know, even if you look at the B2C world. I'm just. I don't know about you, but I'm really intrigued by some of these, like, 3D, um, billboards. You know, those ones that kind of come out at you. Those are the really eye catching ones to me. Whenever I'm on my Instagram or my TikTok whatever, and I'm scrolling through, whenever I see, like, a hand reaching out of a billboard or something, it makes me stop. Right. I think, well, what is that? Yeah, I think Maybelline just did one with mascara as well. And that, like this giant thing. I mean, these are disruptive B2C type of things. Um, and look, I know in B2B we've tried to emulate some of that too by doing stunts. And experiential marketing doesn't quite have the same impact because our products aren't necessarily that tangible. But, um, yeah, I think it's just fascinating now with the use of technology, what we can bring to some of our campaigns as well.

Nathan Alibaba: Absolutely. Love it. Okay, so now we get into our favorite round, our, uh, speed round. So these are questions that I'm going to fire at you, and your job is to respond as quickly as you can from the gut. Almost like Don Draper would, uh, with a cigarette in hand and a Cosmopolitan. Okay, are you ready?

Sumi Shukla: As ready as I'll ever be.

Nathan Alibaba: Okay, what's the problem with B2B right now?

Sumi Shukla: Oh, gosh. What's the problem with B2B right now, I think as B2B companies, sometimes we are our own worst enemies. We trip over our internal, uh, challenges that can sometimes prohibit us from getting out there quick enough.

Nathan Alibaba: How would Don Draper fix the problem?

Sumi Shukla: I'm not sure if I'd advocate for how Don Draper would potentially fix a problem, but I think might make it worse. He might make it worse. But, you know, he was also known for speaking his mind, wasn't he? And I don't think he would hold back if he saw a problem that was prohibiting him. He, um, would definitely kind of go in all guns blazing. I'm sure.

Nathan Alibaba: Love it. Logic or magic?

Sumi Shukla: Oh, it's gotta be bit of both. Magic driven by logic.

Nathan Alibaba: Okay. Brand building on lead, lead generation.

Sumi Shukla: I don't think you can divorce the two anymore. Um, I think I got to pick.

Nathan Alibaba: I got to force you to pick a side.

Sumi Shukla: Oh, my goodness. You're asking. I lead a demand generating team, and I truly see the value of brand building. So, um, it's a compact because both are so inter late. You know, companies buy from companies they trust and recognize. So, yeah, um, I can't pick. It's both.

Nathan Alibaba: Good answer. Yeah, it is. It is actually both. To be honest. It is actually both. There is no either or. Um, okay, the last memorable advert that you can think of. Tv, online, wherever, print, wherever, might be Maybelline.

Sumi Shukla: It probably was, to be honest, because that's the most recent one. I've just. I've seen, um. I saw massive tubes of mascara

Nathan Alibaba: coming out of the building.

Sumi Shukla: They even did it in tube stations. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That was probably the last.

Nathan Alibaba: No, you're not going to forget that in a minute if a massive mascara comes at you on the exact thing. Um, and my final question, Sammy, what's your favorite Don Draper quote or moment?

Sumi Shukla: Oh, my gosh. Um, Don Draper right now. Taking me back a few. Few years.

Nathan Alibaba: So.

Sumi Shukla: So I, um, think he said something around. Keep it simple, but make it significant. I think that was profound.

Nathan Alibaba: That just wraps up our conversation in a bow. I think that's a great place to end. Simmy, thank you so much for such a fun and insightful chat.

Sumi Shukla: Thank you so much for having me. It's been great. Thanks, Nathan.

Nathan Alibaba: I'm Nathan Anibarber. See you next time on B2B needs Don Draper.

Narrator: Find out more@TrueAgency.com podcast.