Episode 11 Dom Hawes, Selbey Anderson: B2B Marketing is “looking in the wrong direction”

Is marketing having an identity crisis? In this episode, Kevin sits down with Dom Hawes, CEO of agency group Selbey Anderson, to ask why so much B2B marketing has become narrowly focused on content and comms, at the expense of strategy, pricing, product, and customer value. Dom argues that we’ve reduced a business-critical discipline to “T-shirts, mugs, and websites” - and it’s time to fix it.

From the untapped power of pricing to the rise of “untitled marketers,” and the problem with even calling it ‘B2B…’ this episode is a thought-provoking take on what business marketing really is, and what we all should be doing instead of ‘looking in the wrong direction…”

We cover:

• Why marketing needs to reclaim its role as a strategic business driver - “There's a generation of ‘untitled marketers’ - they’re in operations, customer success, even product - but they’re doing more real marketing than the marketing department.”
• How brands lose value when marketing is reduced to comms - “If your marketing function isn’t touching price, product, or distribution, you’re not doing marketing.”
• What marketers can learn from DevOps and why AI will reshape agencies - “AI won’t kill agencies, but the ones that can’t shift from outputs to outcomes will struggle.”
• Why being “more human” is too lazy a goal.
• The trouble with orthodoxies like 95/5, and how they mislead - “The 95/5 model is misused. It's become another stick to hit marketers with instead of helping them think.”
• How to stop trying to “do more” and start focusing on impact - “A great marketer starts with three questions: Who is the customer? What do they want? And how do I create more value than the next guy?”
• The ‘pile-on’ culture on LinkedIn, and why it undermines the profession - “People pile in to attack ideas they don’t like. That’s not thought leadership, it’s thought policing.”
• Why ROI is the wrong conversation, and what to measure instead.

About our guest:

Dom Hawes is Group CEO at Selbey Anderson, a marketing group comprising five specialist agencies. A long-time champion for marketing as a strategic business discipline, he also hosts the Unicorny podcast. Dom is a sharp thinker with strong opinions — on brand, growth, AI, and the future of the agency model — and in this episode, he shares them with honesty and impact.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.