The Commercial Marketer: David Rowlands on the Shift to Strategic Leadership in B2B Marketing

Hello and welcome to the Beyond B2B Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Lee Oden, CEO of Top Rank Marketing. And today our guest is someone based in the UK, but working at the center of B2B marketing content and community globally. With uh editorial background, he's advanced over the last six years to head of content and head of product at b2bmarketing.

net and their B2B marketing community, Propolis. Plus he's host of the B2B Marketing Podcast, which not too long ago, past 200 episodes. Of course, I'm talking about David Rowlands. Welcome to the show, David.

Thank you for having me, Lee. Pleasure to be here. Great, great. So let's kick things off with an origin story, your marketing origin story.

How did you get into uh marketing in a specifically B2B? Sure. Yeah. Really good question.

think like a lot of marketers, um, you know, my background is not marketing at all. I mean, it's one of those industries where people seem to have come from all walks of life. Um, and I think, you know, that's actually what makes it such an interesting profession. You're, you're always meeting people with slightly different perspectives and different, um, origin stories, as you say, uh, from my own point of view, I mean, I, I graduated with a history degree.

Um, very simply, I wanted to get some, get into something around writing newspapers, journalism. was my, kind of entry into the working world. Um, and my first role was at a, uh, an oil and gas, um, publication for, for the liquefied natural gas industry, actually. So it was lots of, um, lots of magazines and blogs all about, um, what was happening in Texas at the time, shipping gas all around the world.

Um, and. I think after a certain point, you know, I found that really interesting, but I wanted to be more involved in the, uh, you know, the sort of the revenue facing side of things, if you like, and content obviously has a huge role in that in any business, but it, can often feel quite removed from the commercial side of a business. Um, and I think the natural step for me was, well, how do I do that? Well, you know, marketing is all about kind of, you know, driving, making money for a business.

And, um, I eventually, you know, during COVID right at the beginning, I saw a role at the company, B2B marketing, and the role was editor. So it was a sort of perfect blend of the two worlds I was in. Um, and yeah, that's how I got into it. And I've, I've been in there ever since.

Well, what a great place to, uh you know, mature your knowledge around, you know, a discipline then somewhere like B2B marketing. um You know, I've had, I've had some exposure to the organization through speaking at events and contributing to some of the reports and that sort of thing over time. And, and, and it's really, it's a really at the center of, advancing, you know, what's important for, for B2B marketing and not just in You know, Europe, obviously in the US because you have a US event as well.

And the podcast reaches here too, which I have to say I have enjoyed many episodes of your podcast while running. Fortunately, I broke my ankle not too long ago, so I haven't been running recently. So I need to I have a queue built up. But as I mentioned, you you're the podcast passed over 200 episodes not too long ago.

And like I think we're at number 15 or 16 or something like that with this this podcast. Do you have any advice? um for running a podcast in the B2B marketing space. Sure.

Yeah. And again, you know, really good question. think, and the first thing I'll say is that, know, we've got a lot to learn ourselves. think we, as a media and events and community business, we do so much that I think we could, could certainly spend more effort on the, on the podcast.

And that's one thing we're really looking to do this year. Um, I think for me, main thing is speaking to people with a different perspective and something interesting to say. And I know that sounds quite obvious. Maybe, maybe that's a sort of, well, you know, clearly, you know, you want interesting guests, but there's so much saminess out on, LinkedIn, which is where, know, a lot of these clips are seen and where people access these podcasts.

I think actually having someone who's not afraid to maybe challenge the status quo, um, albeit, know, with a reasonable view, I'm not encouraging. sort of lunacy on, on, on airwaves, but someone with something a bit different to say, um, always goes down well. And I think as well, actually, and this is something we're looking to do as well. It's actually speaking to people who aren't in marketing because I think we're a quite a, we can fall, we can fall foul of only speaking to marketers.

And obviously marketers have an interesting perspective because we're in, you know, in the marketing industry, but it can become a bit of an echo chamber. And I think speaking to people from sales or from products or from. legal or from finance. I think those people actually have a really interesting view of what they expect from marketing and just sort of flipping that perspective I think makes for a really interesting conversation and kind of stands out from that saminess I mentioned a minute ago.

you like I kind of just uncover a little bit about or unwrap a little bit about what is what are those responsibilities that you have um at the company. So explain to people, I guess, to folks who may not know that are watching or listening, what B2B marketing is, because in the US, when we hear that we hear we think of category, not of a company name. um And then and then the community as well, if you could explain a little bit about that. Yeah, sure.

So I'll tell a little bit of a story. So B2B marketing. the company started in the early 2000s in the UK. We started as a print magazine and that very quickly expanded into events, many of which are still running.

Like B2B Ignite is our flagship event in the UK. Award ceremonies, so we have the B2B Marketing Awards in the UK and the Elevation Awards in the US. And that's really how we got started. What we started to actually do, I suppose inadvertently, is build this kind of latent community because we were speaking to B2B, senior B2B marketers at round tables we were running.

They were helping to judge at our awards. They were speaking on stage at our conferences. And this was all kind of going quite well in the background. And then COVID happened.

And what happened to us is the same thing that happened to businesses all over the world is that our events were essentially put on indefinite hold and we didn't know when they were going to come back. It could have been six months, a year, two years. I mean, at that stage, no one really knew what was going to happen. Speaking to our clients, what they told us they wanted is that they still wanted that ability to connect with their peers, but they also wanted trusted advice.

I think in that time as well, because events were shut down and direct mail sort of came to an end as well, because you couldn't send things to people's offices, everyone went into the digital space. So suddenly all of these channels were just flooded with not just media outlets acting like publishers, but every single company became a publisher as well. Yeah. which, you know, had some benefits, but, know, plenty of drawbacks as well.

So Propolis, um, kind of came about as a place for marketers to come together in a uh bit of a safe space to share ideas. Um, but also a place where they knew the content they were reading was high value and it was trustworthy. It wasn't just, you know, something someone had said on, LinkedIn effectively. Um, so that's really what, Propolis is all about.

And my role in that is shaping the roadmap behind Propolis. as well as the content strategy itself. No, that's really great because I think, you know, there's a lot of hunger for community in marketing and all over the business world. think um some of it's born out of the effect of remote work.

think that occurred during COVID. There are remnants of that hybrid, you know, work environment approach. There's a lot going on in the world and the business world as well. I know, you know, I have a remote team, fully remote team here in the U S but we get together.

We have scheduled in-person get-togethers for the folks who are able to make it. And uh it's priceless, that connection. So whether it's connecting virtually or uh connecting in a maybe structured in a thoughtful way, but also spontaneous, uh it creates a lot of value, doesn't it? I think that sounds like what Propolis is doing.

uh And I'm familiar with B2B marketing, as I mentioned, because I've spoken at events, actually did a keynote in London and I've spoken at the US event. one of our, we've had clients win the elevation awards. I think it was LinkedIn most recently that won something there. But, you know, that was what three, four years ago.

wondering what, because you've been there for almost six years now. So what's changed um in terms of the focus? ah that you've seen as it relates to B2B marketing, what's important to marketers, what you're doing to solve for their interests, ah what's changed in that regard over the last three or four years? Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting one.

I think essentially the marketers we speak to, I mean, there's so many things that have changed in the last three years. That's the first thing to say. So trying to boil that all down to one thing is really hard. But I think the marketers we speak to are busier than ever.

They're under pressure like they've never been before. And they need to prove the value of what they're doing. So If you cash your mind back, let's say 10 years, it's not to say marketing was easy. It absolutely wasn't.

never has been. But I think the traditional kind of sales model was a lot more effective. know, people expected a cold call. Sales really bore the brunt of the pressure in terms of actually driving the revenue.

What's happened is that because buyer behavior has changed and people don't want to pick up a phone to a cold call. They just want to do their own research. They want to speak to their peers. They want to learn from other people in the industry and essentially make their own decision on their time.

That's put the ball very much in, in marketing's court. So on the one hand, that's obviously a really good thing because it means that marketers are now in this place where they are the most sort of, um, influential people and how effective a business can be at actually driving revenue. On the other hand, there's this huge bridge to gap because marketers are quite often they're using those traditional sort of marketing techniques, um, where they're essentially trying to generate lots of MQLs and translate some of those MQLs into sales.

But actually what they need to be is be much more kind of strategic in their approach, working cross-functionally and building entirely new marketing strategies and operating models essentially in terms of how they're actually going to drive revenue. So what's changed for us, I think, is that if you go back three years, there was a lot more focus on the sort of creativity and brand. And now it's not that stuff isn't important. It's actually more important than ever because you still have to cut through to people.

But in addition to all that creativity and brand stuff, there's lots of conversation around how do you prove the value of marketing? And it's all around creating dashboards, creating processes with sales. So you're, you're working together. Not, there's not a handover.

You're, you're working in lockstep along the way. So it's become a much more technical world, which can be quite overwhelming at times, but I think it's a huge opportunity as well. You know, I appreciate what you're saying about the sort of updated B2B marketing operating system, as it were, and this intersection of creativity and accountability. we've actually have that ourselves.

I mean, we built up something called Best Answer Marketing Architecture, which accounts for data-informed creativity. you know, even a trust element, multi-channel distribution and unified analytics to tie it all together, which is interesting. uh But it's still new and evolving. But I think it's uh what you're speaking to is definitely a reflection of what the moment calls for in our industry, right?

uh In terms of marketing being able to justify its existence because it is under more of a microscope. uh So I'm wondering, I want to ask you a little more about Propolis. So what are some of the sort of practical things people are like in terms of the value prop of Propolis and how does that manifest in terms of, you know, interactions, events, content, like what is it that, what are the formats that Propolis is creating value through? Yeah, no, good question.

So it's an interesting one actually, because over the past couple of years, a big job that I've had to work on personally is actually linking all of these different elements. So we still had awards, we still had conferences, we still had round tables, we still had uh expert consultants, we still had digital content, but they were all quite disconnected. And it was like, let's just use all of these formats in different ways and try and deliver value. Now they did do that.

That's why we, you know, it's working successfully and we have a good business, but what we've had to do is really link a lot of those things together so that the membership experience makes a lot more sense. So essentially what we do is as a propolis member, you, you join, you join the community. Um, we speak to your team leader. learn about your challenges, your objectives, your tech stack, um, what your, where marketing sits within the business.

ask all these questions. We also run a skill survey on your team. So we learn about where are they stronger and weaker as a commercial marketing unit. We break that into six key skills.

And then what we do is we design a program of expert consultancy training and content for each account. So it's not bespoke, but it's tailoring the experience to different clients. One of the things we do is we have round tables each quarter. Um, and we bring our leaders together and we discuss a big issue at that moment in time.

And obviously that can change depending on what's happening in the world. Um, and we, that's how we bring the community together, you know, in person. What we do is we capture all of that insight, what people are saying, what they, what they want to focus on and what they're struggling with. And then we share that with the wider community.

So that then translates into training courses and how you can overcome some of the issues that have been raised and so on. So I think the big thing just to kind of sum up is. What kind of sets Propolis apart is there's loads of great white papers out there outside of Propolis. There's loads of great training courses, lots of this material already exists.

But I think what Propolis does is it actually gives you a plan for putting some of those learnings in place. It's not just a 200 page PDF. It's a case of let's learn about this together and let's give you the skills to actually execute a working strategy. Yeah, I can imagine a lot of value of a team going through that together as opposed to, you know, there's a lot of self-directed learning because of people's crazy schedules and that sort of thing here at least, um something that, you know, a system that people can tap into like that.

uh I could see that being very, very intriguing. uh So you and the team have introduced the concept of commercial marketer. uh Can you... Yeah, sure.

I think m before we... look at what a commercial marketer is. think it kind of makes sense to think about what was the opposite of a commercial marketer. And this isn't necessarily kind of official thing we're using, but I like to think of the opposite of a commercial marketer as a promotional marketer.

So that's someone who is, you know, basically given a product or a service and said, promote that, you know, it's not really about understanding the market. It's not about really getting under the skin of clients. It's just about promotion and it's campaigns and it's ads and it's automation and it's all that stuff. Of which is still, you know, let's be fair, it still plays a really important part in, marketing.

The problem with that is that effectively, as we were kind of alluding to earlier with this change in buyer behavior, it's, it's less effective. You know, marketers are generating leads, a tiny percentage of those leads now convert into a sale. It's very difficult to prove any kind of science behind the leads that converted why and when, and then marketing, doesn't really gain the, the respect as the sort of strategic. sort of revenue function that it should be.

So then what happens is the cycle completes and they're given another product and another service to promote. And the status of marketing is kind of just relegated. The shame in all that is that because by behavior has changed and all these journeys are happening in, in very digital ways, there's a massive opportunity for marketers to, as we said earlier, to kind of step up and transform the whole way marketing operates within the business. So moving away from this promotion team and into a really sort of commercially uh effective function.

So a commercial marketer, we believe is someone who does that. They're in contact with the product team, the sales team, the customer success team. And really what they do is they think about what is, what are the business objectives first and foremost, and how can we build a strategy that's going to help deliver those? They're not thinking through shares, likes, uh number of posts.

that kind of thing or webinar attendees, they're thinking through the lens of how is this activity going to drive our pipeline and drive our close one deals? And that's really what a commercial marketer is all about. m that has become quite popular as a perspective that integrates disciplines, you know, with working hand-in-hand with sales, you know, um and working hand-in-hand with maybe product as well, and being accountable, creating methodologies and structures that allow for, um you know, repeat success, obviously declining on the things that aren't working, but...

uh you know, an architecture that is more about, you know, I guess there's a utility that's missing in promotional marketing, right? It's very egocentric from the brand perspective to just go out and push something as opposed to with empathy, understanding what are the, you know, sort of triggers, category entry points, what are the things that, uh you know, the pain points that that buyer's trying to solve for and how can you strategically, it sounds like, how can you strategically approach Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And I think that, you know, marketing as well is it's everything you've just said. And I think marketing is in such a good place to lead that because fundamentally they're the ones that have a lot of this data on the customer. And that's what this, a lot of this boils down to.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So what do you think some of the biggest structural changes uh are there in B2B marketing right now? Like, you we talked about buyer behavior changes. uh Could be revenue models.

uh Obviously, tech stacks are different. mean, you're part of your onboarding of your Propolis uh community members is understanding their tech stack, right? So I'm just kind of curious, what are you, you know, what's standing out? Mm.

a more effective commercial marketer. Well, I think, I mean, there's lots to unpack there. And I think AI is the, is the big one for lots of reasons. No, you can't, you can't, but I think that's, you know, the interesting thing is I think that quite often it comes up as a topic in conversation and people think about, how can we use AI to be more effective?

And sure, like, you know, we probably all should be doing that. We should definitely be doing that. But I think there's a bigger question around how AI fundamentally changes how, what works in marketing. mean, from my sort of, if I put my content hat on, um, you know, as an editor, I think about the role of content.

And actually what used to happen is that, you know, if you had a question about a specific thing, let's say, know, B2B marketing as an example, you would come to a website like b2bmarketing.net and you would, you would search for the answer you were looking for. I mean, that's really how it used to work. Then you would hopefully get on some kind of mailing list.

You'd be contacted, you'd come to events and so on. What we're seeing more and more of is that people, they don't want to waste their time with that. They want to get straight to the point that they're looking for. And they go to LLMs, they go to ChatGBT.

They ask the question they've got and they, they do actually get a pretty good answer. So I think one of the things marketers are struggling with in this world that everyone is now a publisher, that people aren't necessarily going to those sites for the same reason that they used to, you know, they're going straight to ChatGBT for their answer. So. There's a lot of things happening all at once in the industry that changing the way that marketing works and how it needs to work.

But I think certainly from my perspective, think LLMs are the big disruptor at the moment. Okay, yeah, yeah. it begs kind of an interesting question. I was just talking with someone yesterday at a pretty big organization, like a Fortune 100.

They had put pause on their blogs and had made quite a bit of substantial staffing changes in the content area. However, a couple months later, now they're thinking about, well, what's the role of content like a blog platform? Mm. Mm.

they're predicted, right? It's a probabilistic function of taking content from disparate sources and query fan out and all that stuff and kind of bringing together what it thinks or what it predicts, not thinks, what it predicts is the best answer um for what someone's looking for. So is there still utility outside of the direct consumer to blog or consumer to content? Definitely.

community? What's the use of content? Yeah, definitely. I think, you the good thing is, um, for anyone in content, I personally, I think content is still hugely valuable.

I just think it's the type of content that's changed. think, you know, previously, I mean, even ourselves as a business, used to publish tons of, um, you know, blogs just on what could be on anything, you know, it could be on a new campaign that's come out or, um, how a new technology is going to sort of change the game, whatever it may be. It's not that that content isn't good or isn't, isn't valuable to someone reading it. It is.

It's just that because we're now in a world where, as I say, every agency, every vendor, every individual quite often on LinkedIn is a publisher in their own right. You writing a blog on ABM, for instance, is going to, it's going to really struggle to say something different that hasn't already been said, in my opinion. So I think the content that we find that's really valuable is the content that's based in proprietary data and actually has a really strong. foundation for saying something different in the industry.

The content that I think is going to, it's not going to die out, I think become less important is that sort of bloggy newsy content. And the stuff that's going to be really valuable is the stuff that is really based in data, uh surveys, uh customer data. It's that kind of stuff, because that's what provides something unique that you can't just get from ChatGBT. Yeah, exactly.

a lot of that sameness or perceived sameness is really like in the realm of average, and nobody wins by being average, right? And I uh absolutely agree with you on the idea of using data. Amazingly, that's the first pillar of our best answer marketing architecture is data informed, right? You've got to find data.

And that means original research or proprietary data that you might have. Could be CRM data, SEO data, and LLM data, if you can grab that. uh to inform you about what's important to the buyers and how that reconciles with the solutions that you offer. And then you can use that strategically to architect marketing programs or community engagement or whatever it is.

The other thing, the interestingness of content is a big role. And I know you talked earlier about, you know, People used to really lean in on the brand and creativity of things all by itself, and now they need to be accountable for the performance of those things. And you did say that those things are still important, and I absolutely agree. I think they're even more important in some ways too, in that there's this...

just sheer volume of information that you can tap into, and you've got to stand out. And it's one thing for a brand to have a differentiated point of view, which I agree with you is absolutely important. If that can be data informed, great. When other people are articulating and advocating about the things that are important about your brand, Mm.

with partners, with influencers or creators, with employees, with your own customers. mean, there's a lot of collaboration opportunity to tap into the voices of the folks who are actually in the front line of being faced with these problems that they're having in marketing and business and to... invite them to be participants in the very content that ultimately you're using to sell to them or to make them aware of your solutions. And I think there's an interesting dynamic that's starting to happen there.

You're in a great spot to take advantage of that because you've got both B2B marketing and you've got the Propolis community. And I know you're already doing that. You're already inviting community members to be, you you have those round tables and that, you know, spawns other content and that sort of thing. I just think you're in a great spot to take advantage of that.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think, you know, in our just actually grounding this in the data seems that's what I've just been saying everyone should do. We were actually looking at our awards recently and what we do is we compare all of the entries from previous year to the current year. And the idea is to essentially just see, you know, what's changed, what's different year on year.

Obviously there's a lot of stuff that's similar, you know, account-based marketing that as an approach is just getting more and more popular. But one of the things that jumped out was actually the sort of the much heavier focus on using influencers and advocates. And I think that kind of speaks to what you're saying that people aren't just using the traditional channels in B2B, know, email and, um, know, LinkedIn, whatever it may be, but they're also taking these kind of more like social approaches, um, finding people who have a bit of a name for themselves in a space and leaning on them as a channel.

And it's, something that's being more and more effective. And back to your point about, um, creativity and brands still being important. Totally agree. Just like to reiterate, I think those two things are more important than ever.

It's not about being a commercial marketer, not a brand marketer. You kind of have to be both. And the marketers that are really winning are the ones who have got both, you know, they understand exactly what they need to do and why and how that drives revenue and so on. But they also, they have that ability to come up with ideas that resonate and stand out from the crowd.

And quite often those ideas and creative, they're very un B2B, you know, they're quite consumer, if you like, and it works. uh yeah, long may it continue. Yeah, know, it's like the role of storytelling. is such an important role, such an important thing um for connecting in a less mechanical, more meaningful way with B2B audiences and those larger buying groups and whatnot.

um There's an expression, it's no longer enough to inform B2B buyers. You've got to help them feel something, right? And so that creativity and storytelling and that consumerization of B2B messaging speaks to that, I think, quite a bit. You're making a great point, I guess is what I'm saying.

So go ahead. oh, sorry, Lee, just, just, um, one other thing as well. think the emotional side of it that you've alluded to that I think it's in some ways, it's more important than B2B than it is in B2C. Mmm.

think for a long time, and this isn't necessarily new. mean, people have been saying this for a number of years, but it's always good to reiterate it. think in B2B, was always seen as well when you buy in B2B, it's a rational, logical purchase, because it all makes sense in a spreadsheet. To an extent, you know, there's a bit of truth in that, but what is a more emotional decision?

You know, is it the decision to buy a new pair of, you know, a new pair of shoes because you like them for a hundred dollars or $50 or... Or is it a more emotional decision to put your career on the line by putting $300,000 into a certain bit of technology? I mean, I would say it's the latter. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, they say you'll buy based on emotion, but you got to defend that decision or buy based on logic, defend. No, buy based on emotion, defend with logic. I don't know something to that effect, but yeah, it's almost like that silly argument about brand and demand. It's like, you know, it's both.

It's both. Clearly you make an Hmm. Yeah, it's There's 10 things, um, which I will try my best to, um, remember off the top of my head, but it's not just one, unfortunately, there's a few things that we can, we can see across the winners. Um, one is, um, being more, more human with your communications, which I think we've, we've kind of alluded to.

One is more, um, visually creative branding, which kind of ties into that first one really, but it's about being. standing out. those, those are the two sort of more creative leaning ones. think the two that are probably more interesting to this conversation are one is the AI, is AI integration across everything.

think if you looked sort of two years ago, when we saw AI coming up in entries, it was very much as a, I guess, a gimmick. was a way of saying, look, we've, we've used AI and we've done it to do this cool thing. Um, and you know, and that makes us look impressive in the world of AI when we're talking to our clients. And for a period of time that was kind of enough and it sort of worked.

think now the campaigns that we see doing really well are ones that are integrating AI into the entire team, the entire sort of function of marketing and sales. Everything from, yeah, everything from collecting and analyzing data, um, to, uh, tailoring communications, um, to being better at predicting churn or, uh, when, when you're going to win a new deal. So. people are doing really well are not just using AI on the side as, you know, he's chat GBT to do a bit of X, Y, and Z.

It's, almost part of the, the fabric of their team. So that's the first one. I think the second one is this increasing focus towards account-based marketing. And obviously over the years, I mean, we've had account-based marketing, we've had account-based experience, we've had account-based growth, account-based sales and marketing.

mean, there's so many kinds of variants of it, but they're all You know, it's all a similar thing. It's about treating accounts as, a market unto themselves. Um, and we're just seeing that increasingly become the status quo. And it's very rare now that we see a marketing strategy that's done exceedingly well, where it hasn't had some aspect of account focus within it.

It's I'm saying ABM, but actually it's just become the way that we, we market. Um, Yeah, it's marketing. Exactly. So I think those are kind of a few things that stand out.

Okay, great, that's great. That's really useful. um And I think it lines up with a lot of folks, what a lot of folks are seeing here. um I'm wondering back around the commercial marketer concept.

um How does something like a commercial marketer, someone who has adopted these and benefited from... you know, uh this adoption of commercial marketing perspective, how's that going to change their value as a person inside the marketing organization or even inside the business, you know, where they function? Inter so sorry, just someone is saying the question. How does that transform their role in the business?

the value. let's say, you know, I'm like, okay, this idea of commercial marketer makes sense. I'm going to drill down into that. I'm going to educate myself.

I'm going to be a part of the community and I'm going to, you know, what's the value now that I have adopted this commercial marketer perspective for the business I work for? What's the value for the marketing organization I work for if I bring that capability to my team? Yeah, sure. Good question.

I think you can look at it three ways. You know, what's the value for the business? What's the value for, well, two ways really, what's the value for your business and what's the value for yourself from a slightly more selfish sort of career point of view. I think if you look at what happens, if you don't become a commercial marketer, it's easy to be a little bit sort of doom and gloom apocalyptic about it.

But I do think, you know, marketing has already been squeezed out. strategic conversations, that they become that promotional marketer as we spoke about earlier. That's not good for the business because fundamentally they need marketing to help grow the business, especially now that buyer behavior has changed and the traditional B2B sales model doesn't work. they need B2B marketers to be involved in the overall revenue strategy.

Otherwise they're not going to do as well as they could do. So it's bad news for the business is one. The second thing is obviously that You know, your, your role in the business, you go from essentially being a, a cost center into a growth driver. And that means that your role within the business is a more, more effective because you're not just promoting and creating more and more content to put out there.

You're having a clear line towards revenue and you can prove that to the whole team. So your role becomes more crucial to the company and you see, become seen as a, as a must have not as sort of nice to have when times are good. And the good news is, you know, from the sort of career point of view is that if you're able to do that and demonstrate that and show the impact you're having on revenue, that's only going to be a good thing for your career. It's a lot harder to, to negotiate for those bigger salaries and those better jobs.

When, when you're talking about what impact you've had on business, you're still talking in those kinds of traditional marketing terms like awareness and, um, you know, reputation important that those things are. you know, the people who are going to do really well are the ones who can clearly stay with no, um, no kind of fluff, as we like to say that the impact they've had on the bottom line. Yeah. So it sounds like, you it's not just value for the individual.

Obviously, it's valuable for the business. It's strategic. It's accountability. Clearly, you know, it wouldn't make sense for just one person to do this within a marketing team.

It makes sense, you know, for a team to go through this sort of process. I guess uh if a marketing team Mm. process. This is something you help teams do, or is this something that is just people are self-directed through the content and community that you host?

How do they go about that? Sure. mean, it's a, you know, it's, a complicated process because every team is different. Um, every team has different strengths and different weaknesses and they, and they need to focus that time in different areas.

I mean, the, the short sort of salesy answer is they should join Propolis and we'll help sort of guide them through that. Um, and As I say, what, you what we do is we look at their strengths and weaknesses. look at their objectives and, and we help them become commercial marketers by directing them in the right ways. think take propolis out of it for a moment.

If I'm just thinking about what should a marketer listening to today do, um, in order to take a step towards being a commercial marketer. I think I would just start by talking to other teams. I think whether it's a work from home thing or just a, just a sort of some kind of. silo we found ourselves in.

think marketers don't always speak enough to other colleagues. There's been a huge focus on speaking to sales in the last few years, because we've been talking about marketing sales alignment forever. But it's not just sales. They should talk to product.

What's coming up? Why are you building that? How can I help our customers understand the value of that? They should talk to content.

If content is a separate department, in fact. They should talk to finance, you know, what exactly do you need to see, um, in the numbers, they should talk to all departments and really get a sense of a, what is the company is trying to achieve and B how marketing can kind of tie all that together and make sure that the company achieves them. I think if they do that and they really listen to what everyone's trying to achieve, you can almost not become a commercial marketer. It's almost harder to not become one than become one.

So, yeah, I think that would be my starting point. Well, great. And obviously there's content. think I saw the commercial marketer skills guide um on your site and there's other content to help people kind of uh drill down into more what's involved.

uh So. we have a commercial marketer guide and it helps you kind of understand the six key skills you need to be a commercial marketer, help you sort of benchmark yourself against the masses as well. I it's always a good starting point, kind of understand where you compare. And then it gives you just a sort of a starting point for how you can get better in all of those areas.

Great. So here we are a couple of months into 2026. What changes in B2B marketing would you most like to see this year? I, yeah, I mean, it's nothing surprising based on what I've been talking about in this, in this conversation, but I think I'd like to see marketers really get back to what is it that the business trying to achieve.

And I think I would get them speaking to more people in the team and really rebuilding the marketing function. So not thinking about what campaigns should we do this year, but really thinking about what is it we need to do. Um, and figuring out new processes and ways of, generating revenue. think AI is likely to be a huge part of that.

But I think the critical thing is that that shouldn't be seen as a sort of, uh a shiny toy that's kind of dumped in at the end. You know, it should be central to the whole piece. I mean, you can almost see AI as a member of the team. Um, so I, yeah, I would like to see marketers be a bit bolder and, rather than thinking about, what can we tweak this year, really think about.

What does this need to look like in order for us to be successful and not be afraid to completely uh rebuild it if need be? So let's wrap up with a dream career question. If you could be doing anything else um as a career, what would it be? Ooh, good question.

Um, I think, there's two answers that I think the obvious answer, um, is I'd be playing as a winger at Liverpool football club. Um, but I think that's that, that dream is probably, probably long gone. So assuming that's the case, I think, honestly, I do like the B2B world and I would like to stay in this space. I did have a think about this and think, you know, realistically, what else would I want to be in?

But I think what's exciting about B2B is that you are at the, you're really at the the coal face of how deals get done and how companies make money. And I just find that whole area really interesting. So I think for me, you know, it's less about moving into a different industry or a different career. It's more about kind of staying in this space and just kind of seeing how it evolves over time.

I love the fact that it's, it's less about product or content or customer success or sales. I like looking at the whole kind of go to market side of things. um And so I think, for me personally, mean, that's the certain direction I'd like to go if I can't play professional football, obviously. I thought it was going be something about music, but uh okay.

So where's the best place for people to connect with you? Sure. I mean, it's the usual, it's, it's LinkedIn. So fight, can find me there.

always sort of posting on new podcasts, our reports, blogs, but also, know, propolis as well. mean, you know, if anyone's listening who is a propolis member, you know, always free to reach out. And you can hear my own, my own ramblings and musings on the BSB marketing podcast, which is on Spotify and Apple podcasts. So yeah, you can check me out there.

Excellent, excellent. Yeah, and I do highly recommend the B2B Marketing Podcast because like I said, I am a listener. I'm a subscriber. All right, great.

Thank you, David. Yeah, thanks, Lee. Thanks for having me. It's been a real pleasure joining.

So thank you very much. I want to thank you for tuning into the Beyond B2B Marketing Podcast. Make sure you subscribe so you can stay tuned for our next guest. And remember, there's no better time than now to break free of boring B2B.