Cameron Heffernan is Founder of Your B2B Marketing, a global marketing agency that helps B-to-B midmarket companies in cross-border outreach and expansion. A serial entrepreneur whose career spans three continents, Cameron previously launched and ran a seven-figure marketing agency, was a journalist at PC World and sold meat door to door as a summer job during college.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- The evolution of marketing agencies into more focused centers of knowledge
- Factors to consider before hiring a marketing agency
- Why Your B2B Marketing is going into a more specialized niche direction, for US market entry
- The importance of obtaining local knowledge when entering new global markets
- Why podcasting is an effective outreach and referral tool
In this episode…
With marketing strategies rapidly evolving, how can agencies adapt to remain relevant and effective in the face of global competition and technological advancements?
According to Cameron Heffernan, the key to staying ahead lies in transforming from a provider of commoditized services to a knowledge center. He emphasizes the importance of evolving in response to global trends, such as the increasing availability of quality content creation and the growing prevalence for working with offshore providers. Cameron argues that agencies must focus on specialized functions and become integral parts of partner networks to offer unique, value-added services to their clients.
In this episode of America Open for Business, Cameron is interviewed by Chad Franzen of Rise25 about the dynamic landscape of B2B marketing. They discuss the evolution of marketing agencies, the critical role of finding and articulating your unique value proposition, and how Cameron’s global experience shapes his approach to marketing in diverse cultural contexts.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by Your B2B Marketing.
Are you a mid-market B2B company facing challenges in articulating your value proposition to customers? Without a well-defined strategy, allocating marketing funds may not yield optimal results.
Your B2B Marketing, a team of experts specializing in devising and implementing plans, helps entrepreneurs and leaders understand what makes them invaluable to customers and put that front and center in their messaging for scalable growth.
Discover how strategic marketing and communication approaches can drive your expansion by visiting www.yourb2bmarketing.co/ or contacting us at info@yourb2bmarketing.co.
Transcript
Welcome to America Open for Business, where we talk with high-growth entrepreneurs and leaders who have found success in one of the world’s most important markets. Hi, I’m Cameron Heffernan, and I’m the host of America Open for Business, where I talk with high-growth entrepreneurs and leaders who have found success in one of the world’s most important markets. Today’s episode, which is our first, and I’m very excited about this initiative, is brought to you by us, your B2B marketing, a truly global marketing agency. Many mid-market B2B companies face challenges in clearly defining their value proposition and articulating it to customers, so we help entrepreneurs and leaders to understand what makes them absolutely invaluable to customers and put that front and center in their messaging. We also enable founders and owners to focus on company growth, not marketing initiatives, so they can really zero in on the best and highest use of their time. You can discover how we can drive your expansion by visiting our website, www.youb2bmarketing.com. And today, I’m excited to welcome to the show Chad Franzen of Rise 25, and Chad has done thousands of interviews with successful entrepreneurs and CEOs and have flipped the script here today a little bit, and he will be interviewing me. Okay, Chad, welcome to the show.
Hey, Cameron, thanks so much. Really appreciate it. It’s great to be here. I’m looking forward to diving into the world of marketing agencies with you. As we get started here, why don’t you just tell me, kind of, why do marketing agencies exist for starters, and why are they important?
Sure, I think the answer I would have given you five years ago would be really different, and it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the pandemic, but what I see happening with agencies in general, and you could say that applies to advertising agencies, to digital agencies, to pay-per-click agencies, is an evolution from a commoditized service that could be provided to more of a focus on a true knowledge center. And I’ll talk about what that means, but as the world has changed with more availability of agencies all over the world that can provide good quality engaging content, images, graphics, video, whatever it may be, as well as more comfort and sort of familiarity and increased frequency of people working with nearshore providers in lower-cost countries, it’s become inevitable, if you want to look at it from a sort of a negative slant. I remember when President Obama used to refer to this as the race to the bottom. I sort of see that happening to digital agencies. What’s going to make your agency different, unique, and really add value when everything’s becoming more and more commoditized? So, I feel that agencies that are going to survive and thrive need to shift their focus to an emphasis on being a knowledge center, part of a network of partners and providers that provide specific functions and really can do one or two or three things really, really well for their customers.
So, why are they important? When we work with clients, one of the things that we hear over and over is, “We feel that working with you and your team, we can kind of hand you the keys to the marketing and outreach car, and you run and drive it. I go off and focus on growing the business.” And if it’s the founder, the owner, the CEO of a mid-market B2B company, that lets them really freely focus on the best and highest use of their time, which isn’t making tweets or graphics or coming up with the best new messaging hook. That is something we are responsible for and take over end to end. So, that’s a part of what’s important. Another part is convenience and one-stop shop. So, our specialty area, we’re not going to be working with huge household name companies. We’re probably going to be working with mid-market size B2B companies, and we understand their needs. One of those is convenience. You know, in one stop, they can get their marketing needs covered from foundation to strategy to execution, working with us as a provider.
So, you know, those sound great. There are all kinds of marketing agencies out there. Do they all have that same attitude? And if not, then what should a person looking to hire a marketing agency keep in mind?
Okay, I think that no, they don’t all have that attitude, and I talk and meet with people who share that philosophy, others who maybe aren’t even aware of it. And I personally feel like, for me, in the direction of our company, we’ve really got to lean into that knowledge center kind of focus. So, when you’re looking at who you want to work with as an agency, what kind of things should you be looking for? Well, I think one is, in a meta kind of way, if a marketing agency cannot articulate to you what makes them special and better and different, how could they do it for you? So, I think in our outreach and our own messaging, we got to emphasize that aspect, what makes us different. There are agencies that compete with what we do in, just to throw off some examples, Monterrey, Mexico, Bucharest, Romania, Cape Town, South Africa, that can do what we do 40 to 50% of the cost. Okay, there are freelancers who can do what we do in some of these different regions again and undercut us on cost. I don’t want to compete there. I don’t want to compete racing to the bottom. So, I’d rather compete or articulate our value proposition, which is working globally. You know, all of our client mix has some aspect, some element to their company, to their function of working across borders, whether their client base is across borders or whether their supply base is across borders. And we can look at that in a little bit, but to articulate the value proposition of what they do. So, if your business is looking for that solution, I think that would be a key part. What is this agency going to bring to us that’s different and really going to help us grow and, most importantly, realize ROI?
So, you’ve talked a little bit kind of about your value proposition. I know you’re kind of looking to go in a little bit of a new direction. Tell me a little bit more about that, the new direction you’d like to take your agency.
Sure, and as I reflected on this, I think it was later last year, thinking about where things are heading and how agencies are evolving, irrespective of what type of focus they have. I look at my personal background. I’ve lived and worked in three different continents, and I’ve spent time with clients really all across the world. So, I wanted to lean into that. That’s one. So, looking at global marketing from a US perspective, you know, if you’re a B2B company based in one of the Eurozone countries, you may even have a presence or even a head of operations or a production location here in the US, but do you need to have a full-blown marketing department? Do you need to hire four to five people to run your marketing? An agency like us can help you do that. We can help you both with already taking what you have on the ground here and expanding and growing, but also, if you’re
looking at the US market for the first time, can help you to identify how do you fit into this market, how do you pinpoint your value from your home market and modify it for the US market. I can actually share an example with you because we were talking about it just the other day, our team. Let me share my screen because it articulates quite nicely, I think, this approach. And this is from a AP news story titled “US tax breaks lure European clean tech companies as EU lags.” This is from last spring. Europe is generations ahead of where we are in this country in sustainability, in renewables, maybe in packaging, several different areas. Their governments have funded it better from the beginning, and now with the Inflation Reduction Act, the US is reaching out to European companies saying, “Hey, come here. Please bring some of that green technology and initiatives here to this country.” That is a huge opportunity for European companies. And yeah, some of it’s going to go to the big companies like DSM or companies in Germany that are household names that you’ve known, but there’s also going to be a need lower down the supply base, right, to come and provide some materials or maybe some services within this area. Okay, and that is an opportunity. That’s the kind of companies that we can work with, can help them to understand the different market here and what we would need to do to work with them to articulate how they’re different and it can help them grow.
Okay, sounds great. Hey, you mentioned you’ve lived in various different places around the world. What kind of experience, that life experience that you have, what have you learned from that experience, and what kind of puts you in a vantageous position for you to move forward in this direction?
Yeah, well, I think it’s that by having that experience, you have the credibility. So, I remember when I was managing communications across Europe for a global Fortune 500 staffing company, and in the US, you don’t have this issue. There’s not seven to 11 different languages. You just jump in and do your thing. There, one of the first things we would discuss is, how would this work in country X? How would this be translated to country Y? And each country has different idiosyncrasies and elements beside the language that are applicable. So, that’s always something that you have to address right at the outset. And I think spending time and living in different countries gives you that exposure and those experiences to draw on when you think about how does a company enter a new market for the first time. When I lived in Europe, I remember, just to give one consumer example, grocery stores, you go in, you put your euro or two euro coin into the grocery cart, and you bring your own bags. Okay, many states have now adopted this approach. When I lived in Maryland, that was an approach there. You bring your own bags. Not many grocery stores do so. Remember when Aldi launched in this country, they put big signs up on the wall, “Give a quarter to the cart,” something like that, because they would make sure you come back with your cart. It’s not a very complicated thing, but it’s just an awareness, right? So, that I would go shopping, that’s something I’m thinking about. Shorter hours, you know, the stores there closed at 6:00 or 7:00 at night. It’s very different, not even open on Sundays in some cases. So, it’s that awareness of thinking of, and again, that’s a consumer example, but it applies to everything that we do, even in a B2B context. Companies that want to come here and do their thing for the first time can’t just bring over, import Europeans who’ve done the same thing there because it’s a different market, it’s a different experience.
So, based on kind of what you’ve shared already, your agency is pretty unique. Give me an example or some examples of your clients or a specific client, and maybe where it’s based or where they’re based, and why your agency has proven to be a good fit for them.
Sure, one, I mean, I think most all of our clients, when I think about them, they have a need to reach across borders, whether it’s marketing across borders or, in some cases, my clients in Latin America leveraging a cost structure in those countries that is a competitive advantage in this country. So, one of my clients, E+C Electronic, they’re based in Austria. The EU is perhaps the most expensive place in the world to make anything, and they do their R&D, their manufacturing, product development there in Austria. Our client is the American managing director. You know, he’s the person who’s responsible for this country as a P&L, for working with his sales team and operations, but they don’t have a marketing function, right, because they work with us. So, we handle that for him. He has effectively said, “Let’s work with your B2B marketing to help us, you know, get the word out for what we do.” We have a full yearlong program, and the case with them, again, one-stop shop, all the things, all the outreach we do in the US, we run that function for him. Another company of ours is based in Asia, and they are a global PEO, professional employer organization. With them, the structure is different because most American companies, when they think of a PEO, they think about a company that’s providing benefits and doing co-employment. That’s only part of the story from a global perspective. So, with that audience, it’s about, “Hey, we can help them reach out to American companies that may be looking at their own overseas expansion.” So, again, their headquarters is outside of the US. We help them by kind of fulfilling that need. So, the owner of the company can focus on new market growth. They’ve recently expanded their support from over 100 to over 160 countries worldwide.
Okay, very nice. Hey, as we kind of wrap things up here, as you mentioned when we first started, this is your first podcast episode. Congratulations. As you move forward with the podcast, what are you most looking forward to?
Just engaging conversations. I love to hear experiences from other entrepreneurs, founders, owners, people who are in very demanding positions about running and growing a mid-market business. And I think, you know, the hard enough place in the world to make your business grow, let’s try to talk to people to share some successes, some examples we can all learn from to help grow their business.
Okay, I will certainly look forward to tuning in and checking some of your episodes out. Hey, Cameron, it’s been great to talk to you today. Thanks so much.
Thank you, Chad. Appreciate it. Take care. So long.
Everybody, thanks for listening to the America Open for Business podcast. We’ll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
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