Marketing B2B Technology: 6 Tips For Overcoming Common Challenges

Thank you B2B Marketing for interviewing me for their latest report "Marketing B2B Technology: 6 Tips For Overcoming Common Challenges", discussing the unique challenges tech marketers face in 2025.

After reflecting on the wider report, here are my four key takeaways (no spoilers 😉):

⚖️ Flexibility meets long-term vision.
Today's tech marketing requires a delicate balance: maintaining strategic direction while adapting quickly to market shifts.

🛡️ Data privacy isn't just compliance - it's competitive advantage.
Beyond regulatory requirements, a privacy-first approach builds customer trust. We need to ensure we're not just following rules but creating meaningful, trust-based interactions that prioritize first-party data acquisition.

❤️ Differentiation requires emotion, not just features.
In a crowded marketplace, product features alone won't set you apart. The most successful tech companies create emotional connections through their brand storytelling (not a term I love, but you get the point).

👥 Decision-making happens in tribes.
Purchase decisions have always involved multiple stakeholders across departments, creating a collective decision process that extends sales cycles. But more than ever, in the current digital noise distraction, it demands tailored content for each persona at every stage of the buyer's journey.

Anyway, you can read more here: https://lnkd.in/eDnfgKE8

Thanks Lina Vaz for inviting me in!

#B2BMarketing #TechMarketing #MarketingStrategy #DigitalMarketing

“Humbled & thrilled” 🤣

At the Pavilion networking dinner in sunny Shoreditch we joked how far too many LinkedIn posts start with “humbled” and/or “thrilled”.

Let’s just say I enjoyed the conversation 😀

Chatham House rules prevent sharing too much but great to get perspectives on

✨PLG v SLG
✨The team of the future (people vs tech)
✨The rise of the “GTM Engineer”
✨Staying current & relevant
✨The latest hot AI apps and agents (this week's edition!)

It’s a great time to be in marketing. So much innovation and lots to think about for the future…

… there’s every chance the marketing team may soon be you leading a group of AI agents 🤖

And who knows, the photo below (taken outside the restaurant) could be your team dinner shot in 2030 🙃

But last night was a reminder that human connection is always going to be valuable and important.

Thanks for the conversations Oliver Hassell, Ollie Browning, FLPI, April Shuxia Wang, Graeme Hutchison, Joe Batten, Rachel Dennis, Donna Owen. And Nicola Anderson for hosting!

Do things only get better?

Last week I booked a restaurant for myself and my Dad (the Potted Pig in Cardiff). I’d been wanting to try it for a while and to some extent it was a random choice.

The day before Dad had been telling me a story about my Mum (she passed in 2020) and how he’d forgotten to meet her on her last day at work when she was pregnant with me (bad Dad!).

It wasn’t until part way through the meal that he casually informed me that the restaurant we were in was actually in the basement of the very workplace that was part of that story (a former bank).

The key part of the story was that when my Mum got pregnant, pregnancy was considered a fireable offence in many companies. And whilst she wasn’t fired, it was assumed she would just leave. There was no question of working, returning to work or indeed maternity leave. Attitudes to working mums was “basic”.

In fact, compulsory maternity leave wasn’t a thing back then as it was only made law in the UK in 1975, and even then it was fairly patchily implemented.

So despite all the bad things going on in the world right now, it got me to thinking about all the positive things that have happened in my lifetime. When I was born global poverty, disease, literacy rates, gender equality and global awareness of environmental issues were a lot worse than today. But since then many things have improved:

  • Dramatic decrease in child mortality rates, increased life expectancy worldwide, and advancements in disease treatment like HIV/AIDS medications. Near elimination of diseases like polio, tetanus, measles, and diphtheria.

  • Advancements in medical science: organ transplantation, cancer treatments, and DNA testing/sequencing.

  • Increased gender equality (including compulsory maternity/paternity leave).

  • Higher global literacy rates with increased access to education, particularly for girls in many regions. 

  • The fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War.

  • The Montreal Protocol successfully reducing ozone depletion, increased focus on renewable energy sources, and greater global environmental awareness. 

  • Development of the internet, widespread access to information, and innovations in communication technology.

We have to believe things can only get better.

Back to School. CRO School!

I’m happy to share that I’ve obtained a new certification: CRO School from Pavilion!

Always good to stay curious, and great to learn from a cohort mostly made up of Sales leaders and CROs. Enjoyed the comprehensive overview of all the GTM functions now coalescing under a single CRO (not Head of Sales!) role.

A lot of marketers are rallying against this development, but I'm a big fan of an integrated GTM team working together under a single leader. If done right you can unlock the connectedness of sales, marketing, customer success and rev ops.

It was also a reminder that the "them and us" of marketing vs. sales is quite frankly ridiculous - we have more in common than differences.

Thanks to all the tutors - Sam Jacobs, Russell Mikowski, Stephanie Valenti, Kiva Kolstein, Sam Slevin, Cassie Young, Rick Smolen.

hashtag#backtoschool hashtag#learnitall hashtag#staycurious

On AI and dotcom bubbles

I know what you're thinking. Aren't those the youthful faces of the dotcom boom? 👶 👶

And yes, you're right! Ferdi and I were both at Ariba during one of the biggest booms (and busts) in tech history.

My time at Ariba was like an MBA in a box. I got to see every facet of business from hyper-growth to rapid crash to recovery. We were valued at $40bn (on revenues of $100m and quarterly losses of $2bn 😱 ), grew our teams by 3x then had to let everyone go. I came out more resilient & tougher, taking the European business from almost zero to $100m in 3 years. What a roller coaster 😅

Every boom booms, the bubble bursts, but ultimately recovers:

✅ The internet has radically transformed our world
✅ Ariba went on to define a new SaaS category still used today (Spend Management), was acquired by SAP and is now SAP Ariba
✅ Ferdi has become a serial entrepreneur (kudos 🙌 ) and
✅ I've gone on to enjoy leadership roles at Microsoft, Adobe, VMware, LettsGroup and others.

Have I seen it all before? Maybe, maybe not. AI is disrupting our industries and our jobs, but the bubble will burst, new opportunities will be created and we'll rise like a phoenix, just as Ariba did. 🐦‍🔥

The Environmental Impact of Sending Email 🤯

My mind was blown this week on the unintended environmental impact of one of the most innocuous activities - sending email (I know!).


📨 It’s estimated 4 million emails are sent every second (thats 347 billion a day). And each one of these not only needs processing power and storage to send, but also to retain. Remember the Cloud is someone else’s computer!

According to Mailjet a spam email generates approximately 0.3g of CO2, while a typical personal email produces 4g of CO2 - more than ten times the impact. Even more striking is the carbon footprint of emails with photo attachments, which can generate up to 50g of CO2 per message.

Obviously, these numbers fall short of power-hungry AI queries* (up to 150-200g of CO2) but highlight how both traditional and emerging digital technologies contribute to our carbon footprint in ways that might not be immediately obvious. 🤯

What can we do about it?

🌳 As an industry: Support initiatives such as "smart expiration" protocols. Under this system, emails would be automatically categorised based on their content and assigned appropriate retention periods. For instance, meeting invitations could expire shortly after the event date, promotional emails could be automatically deleted after 30 days, and important documents could be flagged for longer retention.

🌳🌳 As marketers: Do a better job of thinking hard about sending that next “mass” email, not only from good marketing practice but also from a sustainability perspective. Good targeting and consideration of the ICP will reduce the volume. Don’t spam the base!

🌳🌳🌳 As individuals: Take practical steps to reduce our email-related carbon emissions: limiting unnecessary emails, being mindful of large attachments, regularly clearing out old messages, and unsubscribing from unwanted mailing lists.

*🌳🌳🌳🌳 Bonus Tip! Stop using GenAI to ask what time is it, the capital of France or what's 37*5. It's all relative I know, but using good old Google is much better for the planet!

While each email's impact may seem small, the cumulative effect of billions of emails sent daily makes this something at least thinking about. And how small, collective changes can make big impacts.
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AI and Art: Like Oil & Water❓

It’s tough being an artist. A world notoriously difficult to get into and now being disrupted by AI bypassing human creativity. 😠

While DALL-E and Midjourney may grab the headlines, they're just one small part of how AI is transforming the art world. AI can also handle the business side of art, letting creators focus on what they do best – creating. And empowering artists to build a sustainable career. 💪

That's why I’m proud to work with the team at LettsArt to disrupt the business of art - providing FREE no-code Art Intelligence software for artists to have a better way to manage, share and sell their art. These tools aren't replacing artistic creativity – they're amplifying it by handling the admin and business tasks that many artists find challenging or time-consuming. 🙌

✅ Make More Money. Traditional galleries often take a significant cut from art sales, and don’t offer royalties on future resales. With LettsArt artists cut out the middleman (it’s DTC but Direct To Collector), take a bigger cut of every new sale and even receive royalties from resales of NFT artworks, maximising their potential earnings.

✅ Maintain Control. LettsArt uses AI and Blockchain to make it easy for artists to control the distribution and authenticity of their works.

✅ Spend More Time Creating. From sales and marketing to IT and finance, LettsArt uses AI to provide a whole range of assistants, leaving artists to focus on creating.

✨ Over 800 artists are now running their own gallery using LettsArt (some shared here). Their range of creativity and entrepreneurship is incredible - all using AI to boost their careers.

The reality is that AI and art aren't oil and water at all. They're more like paint and canvas. And the future of art isn't about AI versus human creativity – it's about how they can complement each other.

So, if you know any artists needing a leg up on their journey, have them check out LettsArt. It's completely 🆓. Share this link to sign up: https://www.lettsart.com/start/

🖼️ 🖼️ 🖼️ : Just some of the art from a selection of artists using LettsArt.