062. Brand Perception & Conveying Value in B2B Marketing with Simone Corpora

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My name is Emilio Garcia, your host at the Mangen Studio. Welcome to another episode. I'm really happy to have the opportunity again to share a few minutes with all of you. With me today, I'm really, really excited to share is Simone Corpora, B2B paid media manager at Nichelin. How are you, Simone?

I'm good. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

I'm really, really excited as well. So today we're going to have a very interesting conversation. As you know, guys, when I invite guests at the Managen Studio, we are trying to bring in more of us, right? More markers in the trenches on B2B from different industries, from different venues. And I think we are going to learn a ton of insights from Simone, those that she can share. Of course, considering that there's obviously information that, you know, belongs to Michelin. So I want to start right away, Simone, basically, with, you know, asking you to tell us a little bit about you, right. How do you got into marketing? What has been your career path and your evolution? What are some of the challenges that you have faced? And even if you have, you know, some interesting story about, about your career that you can share with us?

Yeah, definitely. Well, so I was a communication studies major in college and I was very undecided about which direction I wanted to take that. And I knew I wanted to probably work in marketing, pr, advertising, some realm there, but I really wasn't sure which, which avenue I wanted to go. And I knew that I did not have a single artistic bone in my body, so I couldn't go the like, designer route. And so I found a immediate coordinator position at a local agency and that really seemed like the perfect way to still be involved in advertising, but on the numbers and strategy side and placing the ads versus actually creating them. So I kind of stumbled upon media buying and I didn't know what it was in college. I think some colleges now have maybe one or two classes, but it's really not something you can learn in school or really are familiar with. So I started as a media coordinator and then I spent six years on the agency side as a media buyer. So doing both traditional buying and digital, I was working with, I started with more B2B clients and then the last couple years when I was at the agency, I was working with more healthcare systems. So kind of different, different sides to targeting and the types of advertising. I was doing a little bit more traditional as far as out of home print advertising. But digital has really always been my passion. And where I want to kind of guide the media plans that I put together just because of the data that you can get, the reporting, you can understand how it's performing, shift things quickly, be very targeted. So that was really what I was excited about. And then I would say it's been, I'm just under a year with Michelin, so it'll be a year in September as the paid media manager. But it was really a great transition of how do I take this experience as a media buyer on the agency side and then go in house and corporate with still like using that media buying experience. But now I'm solely focused just on digital. So I sit within the B2B marketing team and we have a dedicated digital marketing team that was newly created. So it's been really interesting to transition from agency side moving in house.

Oh man, I have so many questions just in that little piece that you have shared and let me give you some context. You know, some of our listeners already know about this but I want to give you some context of why I have these questions. The questions that I have just like you, right. I'm. I'm drawn to numbers rather than the creative side which I come to appreciate more and more as we have continued to work in these industry. But it's not my thing, right. It's not a strength of mine. So I also draw for media allocation and buying just precisely for that reason. Another thing that you mentioned is very interesting is I've been working at this agency, you know, running Boundify for many, many years, but never worked in an agency before. So I have no reference of how or, you know, what is it to work in an agency. And finally the other big thing is we have always offered digital services. We have never done the media badging buying for more traditional mediums. So I think most of my questions will be around those things. Your point of view on that. So the first one, yeah. What will be, you know, what was the experience? What were the differences, the challenges, the pros and cons of moving from the agency world where you might work with many different clients from all different sizes to you know, corporate corporation in house team where you have one brand that you are going to deal with. What was that transition for you, what you have learned from that?

It's definitely, it's, it's a big learning curve in terms of learning the actual business of Michelin versus we could be a little bit more high level. We still had to understand the client on the agency side, but we maybe weren't involved in all the nuances. Of the intricacies of each, each brand and each product. So moving to Michelin, that was a big thing, a big learning curve of I needed to pick up quickly kind of what, what the product is, who the audience is and understand really the ins and outs of who we're trying to target and reach. But I think one of the benefits, that's also a benefit too of really being involved in kind of start to finish of the whole business, seeing revenue, seeing sales on the client side. So there's definitely pros and cons to being an agency versus in house.

Yeah, I think that strike me as a great comment to highlight. Right. That I when we have conversations with prospects and clients, we tell them you have to have at least one person in your company that I use the word, holds the brand right meaning, knows the business deep enough to drive a strategy not just across digital or in this particular case about pay media, but in general. Right. How the company positioned itself in the marketplace and all that. So that drives me to the next question, which is Michelin being such a big company, its brand being known mostly for direct to consumer, more of B2C scenarios and products. How is that for you that, you know, if not a challenge, working with a brand that is so well recognized on the B2C world and how does that translate for the B2B environment? Do you. How do you handle that portion to present Michelin for B2B buyers as an option and leverage maybe the brand from the B2C side?

Yeah, definitely. So, and I guess too I'll give a little bit of context for how we split B2B versus B2C in Michelin. And with B2B, it covers basically any tire that is not on a passenger car. So construction equipment, tires, mining equipment tires, tires, farming, semi truck tires. So it's. There are several different industry verticals that we service and are trying to target. But I would say a big difference or challenge is really understanding each of those different audiences. We kind of almost operate our digital team kind of operates almost as like a little mini agency because there are so many different verticals that we, we fit. And you know, I think the B2C side is really responsible for our overall Michelin branding and doing those plans and getting the Michelin name out there. So I think people are likely familiar with the Michelin name. But what, maybe what they don't know on the B2B side are the different value props of each tire and why you should choose Michelin. So that's really what we're trying to convey. Is here's where Michelin these products and why you should choose them for your business.

Yeah, I can imagine that, you know, probably the B2C side is more about core perceived values for all consumers. Right. Like I want my tires to last longer, be of quality safety. But, but when you drill down into the B2B scenario, other things come into play as they use specifically for that industry. Right. And the process itself. Right. Changes completely because now you have a corporate buyer that is going through a process and someone from the Michelin side is maybe following up on sales versus you know, probably on the B2C side is more about distribution. That's very interesting. As you said, it's pretty much like a little agency. I. I recently had a conversation with another corporate marketer and she described the situation in very similar terms. Right. Like we are like a, like a small agency servicing different departments in, in this particular case not by industry, rather by almost business unit. So. But it creates the same challenge. You have to a little bit of changing hats to accommodate that. That's great insight. The next question that I have that you mentioned is that shift from traditional pay media or traditional advertising to digital advertising. Can you share with us from your experience when you were working with traditional and then shifting into digital and what you have seen initially and as well what are some of the, the things that are different pros and cons, how buying for traditional is different from buying for digital. And you know, what do you think of traditional nowadays, how it's going to evolve, if at all in this, you know, more, more Internet focused world?

Yeah, definitely, I think. And still with B2B, I think there, there's a little bit of traditional buying that is still present. There are certain cases where I do think partnering with an industry publication makes sense. Maybe not necessarily in a print ad because you can't really measure success from that. But there are other ways to get in front of their audience and align with a source that this audience trusts and align with their content. So I think, I think in that way digital or traditional shifting a little bit. And maybe you know, the trade publication Buy is still considered traditional, but there's more digital ways to go about it. And I think too just being able to show, I mean regardless of whether you're in an agency or on the corporate side, you're constantly getting more pressure to show the value, the ROI and your media dollars. And that's really hard to do with traditional other. And you know, you could say how many impressions you think you served or your reach, but it's really hard to go beyond that. And so having a more digital focused strategy, we're able to show here's exactly what we spent, here are the results we got and then here's how we influenced revenue. So it's really, I think beneficial and also changing the mindsets of people who maybe thought, okay, we just need to run print ads and getting them to the point of no, there's value in digital because we can show all of this data and how it's influencing the business.

Yes, I, I believe, you know, as you said at the beginning, I'm also drawn to numbers. Pretty much the reason I started the agency was because I was trying to promote at the time another business and I was using newspapers and you know, print media. And then I stumble in what was called back then Google AdWords and I was like blown away. Right. I can see beyond impressions, I can see the clicks, I can see the conversions. So that's pretty much what, you know, draw me into the industry. But I feel I, I myself has gone into this journey as a little pendulum on you know, data is important. But also there are values from traditional media that I think sometimes we marketers ourselves, paid media marketers are you know, guilty of ex, if not exaggerating, taking to the limit and negatively impact ourselves in that. And for me that has to be with this concept of, you know, yes, on traditional and to some extent on digital there's some waste, if you want to call it that way, when you are not able to put that billboard for just one person.

Right.

Because your targeting is not perfect. But I also think that we can draw lessons from B2C in that overall brand awareness. It is, it's important, right? You, you want your brand, your benefits, your features and solutions to be known not just by the person that directly is going to make the decision to buy, but, but the larger committee which is not just the champion and the influencer, but overall the company. The perception that they have the brand or the product is important as well. So just because you can't measure it, it doesn't mean that it's not working. It's magic. And I think that's a challenge, right? That is, yes, pay media is well, digital advertising is bringing in this ability to measure to the nitty gritty of who saw, who clicked and all that. But I think it's important to not over value the targeting ability and lose off out of sight that some advertising, even the digital one, should be geared toward building up the brand or the perception of the product among a larger audience. I don't know what you think about that.

Yeah, definitely. And I think it's too important to understand who your audience is and how they consume media. And if your audience is still consuming more traditional media and that's the way to get in front of them, that's still going to be more valuable. Even if you can't show all these numbers to support it, there's still value in reaching them if that's where they're going to be.

Yes, I love that one. I call it the. There's quality in impressions, right? Is, you know, because of the cost or perceived cost of some efforts. You know, if I see an ad on display on a banner, the quality of that impression is way lower than if I see an ad on my feed when I'm logged in on a social media account, when I'm a validated user. And definitely is lower than if I have the opportunity to get the information on a printed media at my home or my office. I use as an example all the time. Again, Even when it's B2C, all the credit card companies like American Express and some other similar ones that you keep getting these pieces of mail at home. Right. And yes, they can deliver all that they can deliver and they do deliver all that through digital advertising. But even if you don't act on those offers, they are putting that, they are putting that impression in your mind. I don't know if you, if you are, you know, follow all the conversations that happen on, on LinkedIn about, you know, in general demand generation, but in particular pay media. I like this concept of when a B2B buyer starts to act on a need, they already have a set of potential providers that will help them with their need even before they hit the search engine. And you can show up or pop up a search ad. So I think that's important. Right. What work are we doing to make sure that we have a good mix of, of impressions that vary from quality. Right. So we can have that impression in the mind of buyers. I love that. I do, however, want to ask you the whole process of buying itself, of allocating budget between traditional and digital. What are the difference that you've seen when you used to buy for traditional media? How is that different from buying for digital?

I would say definitely a big is just the budget required to buy traditional. It's definitely more expensive versus digital. I would say budget is definitely shifting more digital too. But I think just the process of how you allocate budget is still very similar, at least for how I'm doing it. Of based on, you know, our target audience, how much impressions we need to serve and then back out from there based on a CPM or whatever those benchmarks are that we're looking to hit to figure out which channels and where we allocate budget is still very similar to how you would do. How you would allocate budget across digital or traditional.

That's popping up a couple of questions and. Sorry. Right. I'm very curious about all the. Of the answers that you're giving me. The other one is I think Michelin is the kind of company that have the budgets to support media channels that are very intensive or very expensive on the creative part side. Creative side. So I've been seeing a ton of, you know, awareness about advertising on stream channels. Right. Like I forgot the name. CTV or something like that.

It's called ctv, yeah.

Yes. Have you explored that as a company like building. I consider them just regular TV commercials, but deliver on digital channels and therefore you have that targeting availability. Have you experimented a little bit with that so far?

Not yet. On the B2B side, it's definitely something that I would like to include in our strategy somehow right now, I think based on how targeted we need to be with our audience, but also our budget, the features just aren't there yet to really get to our exact audience and be very specific. So I think there's definitely a lot of potential and that's really where the shift is going to, kind of especially for clients who would typically buy traditional TV or linear tv. Now there's a way to reach people. Again, where they are. They're streaming, they're. They're not.

They're not watching those cable channels.

Right. Cord. And so now it's a lot of streaming and you're reaching people where they are. And so I think that's definitely. Budgets are getting shifted there And I think B2B, it's. It's a little bit slower of a transition, but it's where I would like to get us eventually.

Good. And finally, hope this is the final one. Be respectful of your time. How is it for you to work, you know, with. How close do you work with your sales team? How aligned are your goals in terms of what you were saying? Right. I believe that pay media has to focus at the beginning on more of delivery reach metrics like the cost per impression. Right. Reach overall impressions and awareness. But obviously you have to keep going down the funnel into actual engagement and maybe some conversions or at least some sales inquiries. How do you manage the relationship with the sales departments? Or, or the divisions to, as you said, prove value and at least showcase some influence. Influence in revenue.

Yeah, it's definitely a goal of ours is to work very closely with the sales team. And so we also have brand managers that we're working closely with. But sales is really, I mean, they are the ones that know who we're trying to reach or who that profile is the best. And our campaign manager has really spearheaded on our team of making sure that we're in more constant communication with sales. And so we're not kind of operating in silos, but we're getting feedback from them. If it is more a lead generation tactic or ABM focus that we're getting feedback from them, how is the quality of those leads that we're sending you or accounts? Which accounts are you closing? Which. How is that process working so that we can tailor our media spend accordingly? Because I would rather have a little bit higher cost per lead and have better quality leads and know that the sales team is able to work those leads and see the benefit of the marketing and advertising than just continue to have a low cost per lead. But there's not really anything coming from that. So it's definitely a constant process and teamwork to make it happen.

It's an interesting interface there. That's. That's fantastic. So I want to close up with some, you know, brief questions for you, Simone, that, you know, I'm intrigued. So the first of all is, is there any, you know, for those marketers here and right now, specifically in this case for pay media marketers that. Is there any tool that you can live without, any, you know, thing that you constantly use that you consider very useful?

Honestly, I use Excel a lot, so I really could not live without. Which is not a very exciting question or exciting answer. But we also use Monday.com a lot. So that's really helped with the planning and kind of outline outlining what campaigns are going to look like.

Which one, sorry?

Monday.com, the project.

Oh, Monday. Yes, yes, of course. Well known. Awesome. So you rely a ton of Monday, I guess, to organize campaigns and Excel. I agree with you. I love dashboards. Right. I all the time try to strike clients and team members to use dashboards more and more. But at the end of the day, from time to time, you just need Excel to work out the numbers in the way that you truly need to. And it's always good to be proficient at it. I agree. Very good. What are your thoughts on the future of at least this corner of the marketing world, the pay media in particular, B2B. What are the trends that you're seeing? Where do you think this is heading?

Yeah, I think video is huge as far as ad placements and ad format. We're continuing to see stronger engagement from video and having more valuable content that we're promoting to our audience and making sure that they're wanting to engage with it. It's not just, you know, something that we think is going to be valuable. We want to make sure that they are seeing like our audience is seeing the value in the content that we're putting out and are engaging with it. So it's really making sure that we have the right content to the right audience.

Yeah, I, I see video as valuable for many, many reasons. The way that you can repurpose it, the way that is still, you know, a medium that it will be not 100% protected, but at least will be harder to replicate with AI, I guess, compared to reading content. So I think it's, it's a very valuable skill to bring in and medium to bring into the table just because the barrier of entry to it is higher when you're trying to distribute it. I love that. And finally, Simone, any, any advice that you will give to your younger self, right. To a younger Simone, when you were starting with the, with the hindsight of, with the things that you know today, what you will tell her.

Yeah, I would say don't be afraid to take risks and try new things, test different strategies and even if you fail, it's still a learning and something to improve on for the next campaign. So definitely take risks.

That's so true. That's so true. That's an advice for myself as well. Right. The only, the only regret is the path not taking. And so you, you have to try it out. You can always set up as an experiment or, you know, at least see what happens and then reassess. I love that one. Well, this has been fantastic, Simone. I truly, truly appreciate your time today, sharing some knowledge with us and yeah, hopefully we can do this again at some point in the future. Thank you so much for joining in.

Thank you so much for having me. It was great.

Awesome. So thank you guys, everyone for listening. And remember, join the studio. You can follow us on social media and the platform of choice to follow up these events or you can just listen on a podcast. Whatever is your choice. We'll be, you know, delighted if you do. So. Thank you so much everyone. Have a great day. Bye. Bye.