Abstract
- Evolving the role of marketing. Frontline marketing redefines traditional B2B roles and focuses teams on revenue and engagement outcomes.
- Simplify your team structure. This suggests a unified team approach, which has the potential to streamline operations, but runs the risk of oversimplifying specialist roles.
- Please watch and rate. Frontline B2B Marketing consolidates various aspects of marketing, but its true effectiveness in streamlining the process remains to be seen.
I've been digging into Forrester's recent use of the term “frontline marketing” and can't decide whether I should pay attention to it or ignore it when it comes to B2B marketing.
I'm generally a fan of Forrester's work, and longtime CMSWire readers may remember the “Persuasive Content” buzz that the good folks in Cambridge, Massachusetts tried to get going over a decade ago. I got excited about it myself, and still own the .com domain.
But it didn't stick, and I spent 45 fruitless minutes trying to find the most recent mention of the term that Forrester had made in that time. Ah, of course there were plenty of old Gate reports, but it seems like they were talked about for a bit and then everyone moved on.
Related article: Master your B2B content strategy like a pro
Defining cutting edge B2B marketing
So, will frontline B2B marketing also be caught out by Forrester’s assessment?
In this Forrester blog post, Principal Analyst John Arnold describes frontline B2B marketing as “the evolution of the B2B growth team.” Arnold is one of the drivers of Forrester's B2B CMO strategy practice, so it's worth listening to what he has to say.
If you haven't heard the term before, here's a definition:
“Frontline marketing is a Forrester term that encompasses B2B marketing teams responsible for buyer audience engagement and are most responsible for pipeline and revenue results.”
Initial skepticism and agile marketing
My initial reaction was a bit skeptical.
In B2B marketing, aren’t we all “responsible for buyer audience engagement, pipeline, and revenue”?
It's not unusual for me to be skeptical of these things. For example, I'm not a big fan of Agile Marketing. I think great B2B marketing teams are naturally Agile, as is their marketing practice as a whole. We didn't have to learn this from the more structured software development world (a world that I know very well as a former developer and product manager).
Related article: How Agile Marketing Processes Make Great Marketing Teams Even Better
The role of accountability in marketing
If you've read my articles before, you may know I've said many times that the goal of B2B marketing is to generate ART (Awareness, Revenue, Trust). So I'm not sure about that. Aren't we all first-line marketers? Aren't we all agile marketers?
But I think the key to this is this phrase: “Most responsible” According to Forrester's definition.
While the entire marketing team is committed to creating ART, there is likely to be a group within the structure of a larger marketing team that is more responsible as revenue hunters and gatherers.
Related article: How to troubleshoot a third-party demand generation program
Compare Marketing Teams and Strategies
These teams are called “demand generation,” “growth marketing,” or “field marketing,” but they're also critical to the success of your marketing investments, as Arnold describes them as “frontline marketing.”
They are the tip of our marketing spear.
Or, as Arnold puts it, “the linchpin of the company's core B2B customer-focused growth engine strategy,” which sounds more Forrester than spear talk.
I'm also not a huge fan of the Account Based Marketing (ABM) critique. As I sometimes criticize Agile Marketing, I think that focusing on target accounts should be a natural marketing activity in some B2B categories. So another positive thing I take away from Arnold's work is that it blends “demand, account-based, field, and customer marketing.”
Related article: I’m Not a Growth Marketer
Opportunities and challenges of frontline marketing
Awesome, one ring to rule them all?
I think I might be starting to like this.
Jan Karlsson, the longtime CEO of Scandinavian airline SAS, is quoted as saying, “If you're not serving customers, it's your job to serve someone who is serving customers.” I've quoted this quote before and bent it to fit my view of marketing, saying, “If you're not creating art in your marketing, it's your job to serve someone who is creating art.”
Is this a frontline marketing mindset? Like Carlzon’s quote, which explains how to keep your team focused on serving customers and business goals: “If you’re not working in frontline marketing, it’s your job to serve the people who are working in frontline marketing.”
This should impact how you organize your teams. In the past I've created demand gen, field, and growth teams that are then supported by product marketing, marketing operations, content, and creative teams (are these what you'd call “back office marketing” in this model?). You can envision a similar org chart, maybe even with a front-line marketing lead.
This ties in closely with a term coined by Forrester called “lifecycle revenue marketing,” which, unsurprisingly, means:
“A customer-centric growth strategy for frontline marketing that encompasses the entire customer lifecycle and every buying behavior and opportunity type, from initial purchase to retention, transaction to transformation.”
Impact on B2B Marketing
I don’t claim to be familiar with Forrester, but translated, I think this means that our frontline team’s remit includes not only the various demand generation and growth marketing techniques, tools, and activities that I alluded to earlier in my reference to the “tip of the spear,” but also customer marketing and retention.
In fact, everything we do and everything we do that involves anyone – from the birth to the death of a relationship with a prospect or customer.
The question still remains: Will this also include channel and partner marketing, and to what extent will this marketing supergroup absorb the product marketing discipline?
Related Article: ABM 2022: Making it the year of smarter account-based marketing
Conclusion: To embrace frontline B2B marketing or not?
But I'm at a loss.
On the one hand, I'm attracted to the idea of simplifying the field of B2B marketing, which is so full of acronyms and sometimes contradictory best practices, and breaking down the silos that have resulted, so I see this as a cleaner organization and approach.
But because that definition encompasses so much of what we do, one could argue that it merely describes good B2B marketing, requires disciplines and departments within it, doesn’t do much to simplify things, and is quite frankly just another layer of nonsense that B2B marketers have to deal with.
Either way, it's worth a look, and while Tolkien may not be the best analogy for simplifying the story, the “One Ring to rule them all” is a welcome one.
Learn how to join our community of contributors.
