Rosie Guest is on a mission to change business to business (B2B) communications. B2B communications has an outdated reputation for being sometimes stale and corporate, but, as Rosie has shown through her own career trajectory, it doesn’t have to be this way. From helping her company Apex Group communicate its way through multiple mergers and acquisitions while building a corporate narrative around diversity and climate change, to being recognised for this pioneering work with a shelf full of awards including ‘Disrupter of the Year’ and ‘Marketing Leader of the Year 2023. Rosie shares some tips on building a career in B2B communications and marketing.
Don’t set out to please everyone
In business, as in life, it’s always easier to appease people than face potential conflict. Therefore often, at the start of their careers, Marketers find themselves saying yes to whatever request comes their way from the business, and so find themselves quickly overwhelmed and off strategy. Acting as a responsive service centre to please stakeholders may make for a good short term strategy ultimately, avoiding difficult conversations is a long term mistake, both in delivering effective strategic marketing and in building respect in relationships with stakeholders across the business.
To succeed you need to know what your priorities are, know where and when to push back, and crucially, let others know where those boundaries are too. Whether you implement formal service-level agreements (SLAs) with the business around content production or leverage data insights to push back on sales support requests, you need to be able to say no. This will allow you to focus on your priorities with business priorities and deliver against them, rather than becoming a go-to person for requests that simply satisfy stakeholder but ultimately detract from strategic progress.
Don’t wait to be asked
The world of marketing moves quickly, and it’s easy to find yourself in a state of perpetual reaction, responding to change but not driving it.
My advice to anybody who wants to be successful in marketing is to be proactive. Don’t wait for the business to tell you what to do. Drive the conversation, and set the strategy in line with business goals. This is a way to grow your own knowledge and add real value, beyond delivering against your marketing brief.
Take a stand against mediocrity
B2B marketers are so used to being subservient to the business in a very different way from how they are in B2C, where marketing’s work is often more appreciated as a key driver of growth. In my experience, many B2B marketers have become afraid to innovate and come up with challenging ideas.
Of course, it can be difficult to make the case for something new, especially when dealing with stakeholders who are keen on evidence and detail which might not yet exist. To shift the conversation in this instance, my advice is to walk into the conversation knowing what you’re supposed to be doing and stop asking for permission. If you’re good enough at your job, you’ll be quickly see why it’s a more effective strategy, and so will the business around you.
Become a master empath
Empathy remains a woefully underrated skill set in the professional world. To be a successful marketer, you need to be able to tell your brand’s story in a way that resonates with the audience. This means knowing that audience, and understanding what motivates them.
It’s also important however to understand the motivations of your business and management team. What are their objectives and what story are they trying to tell? Bringing the business and the audience together with a compelling narrative, whether that narrative is expressed in PR, social campaigns, broadcast advertising or anything else, empathy is the key to marketing success.
Be an architect and a bricklayer
As a leader, earning the respect of your team requires you to take them on the journey with you. You should be able to design the house and build it too—and do both simultaneously. Getting your hands dirty as a leader fosters a flat-structured environment that breeds a can-do culture. You need to be prepared, and remain technically skilled enough, to roll up your sleeves and do the job of most of your team if necessary. Traffic wardens have no place in rocket ships.
