Maria Harper

I recently worked on a Consumer Product Marketing Director role. The client was clear, every candidate had to have consumer experience. No exceptions. Given that 88% (PMA) of PMM's work in the B2B space, this requirement drastically narrowed the talent pool. It got me thinking about the key distinctions between B2B and B2C marketing and why they wouldn't want to see any one from B2B. I found out key differences: 🎯 Decision making process: Consumer marketing often taps into emotions, driving impulse buys. B2B, however, is rooted in rational decision-making, where data and ROI take center stage. 🎯 Campaign approach B2C campaigns tend to be broad, aiming to resonate with a wide audience. B2B campaigns are laser focused, targeting specific industries or decision makers with tailored messaging. 🎯 Sales cycle length B2C sales cycles can be swift, driven by instant gratification. In contrast, B2B sales cycles are often lengthy, requiring consistent nurturing and relationship building. I speak to a lot of people who are looking to change 'code' and say to me, "it's all the same at the end of the day, human to human interaction" But is that really the case? Or are the differences too vast? Given how tough the job market it is and how employers are making 'safe' hiring decisions. How relevant is this idea today? #productmarketing #pmm #productmarketingheadhunter

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Listen: Comparing the same 3 datapoints against competitors has gotten a bit tired. As marketers, we talk alllll the time about the importance of niching down, yet we're all still using the same few general success metrics across industries and verticals. Fatigue has set in and even if the number is genuinely impressive, it just doesn't have the same OOMPH anymore. But we've still got to find ways to communicate: - How much money we can save you - How much time we can save you - How happy our customers are - How easy it is to win with us So we've got to find ways to do that beyond the ones that people have started to tune out or not take seriously. That's why finding new metrics & datapoints to demonstrate success MORE SPECIFICALLY can be so powerful. (Instead of simply increasing ROI by 100% vs. 200% vs. 300% and so on until the world stops spinning and there exists no more investments to return on!!!) The 37signals Rework podcast is one of the few I consistently listen to — and in a not-so-recent episode, they covered both how they hire & measure the success of hires. At the one-year point post-hire, they make a determination on whether or not they would say "HELL YEAH" to hiring this person again. If not, they posit, maybe it's best to part ways. As a marketer by trade who now works in the recruitment tech space, I loveeeeee thinking through creative ways recruiters can demonstrate their unique impact. How cool would it be to take 37signals' "HELL YEAH" index and turn it into a metric you can then use in bizdev moving forward? "X% of my hires result in a HELL YEAH a year down the line — meaning both the client and the candidate would make the same decision again if they could go back in time." What I love most about this datapoint is that it says a LOT by saying very little. It communicates: - Client satisfaction - Candidate satisfaction - The fact that you care about success DOWN THE LINE, not just about making a placement and moving on - The fact that you maintain relationships with clients & candidates in the long-term, checking in even after the quote-unquote job is done Sometimes compelling data storytelling means finding the story in tired datapoints. Sometimes it means finding a new datapoint altogether.

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✨ First 90 days in a new internal comms role (or looking for a reset/refresh)? ✨ Here's a solid framework for a 30/60/90-day plan. Also! You can obviously use this for your first 90 days in a new job, but it's an amaaaaazing thing to bring to interviews (it's incredibly impressive) and/or a really good option for what I like to call a "hard reset" -- when enough things have changed in your org that you just need to call it all into question and start fresh. The first 30 days: ☑ Share your 30/60/ 90 day plan (seriously! it helps) ☑ Understand the company’s current goals, priorities, & values ☑ Run an internal communications survey ☑ Start a listening tour (formal + informal!) ☑ Review the current toolset & processes ☑ Identify quick little wins: just a few things that can make an almost instantaneous impact The first 60 days: ☑ Complete an internal communications audit ☑ Determine key metrics and set benchmarks ☑ Create an editorial calendar with holidays, observances, and important company dates ☑ Set up monthly touchpoints with key stakeholders (HR, IT, marketing, + leadership for starters) ☑ Achieve and showcase those little wins! The first 90 days: ☑ Document your internal communications strategy ☑ Publish a monthly report with all your KPIs ☑ Evaluate new tools (esp. for email if you're using Outlook or a marketing tool) ☑ Advocate for resources (budget, team, etc.) ☑ Launch or revamp a few core internal communication campaigns (I typically recommend a monthly newsletter, all-hands recap, and weekly CEO letter) ...anything I'm missing that you'd recommend I include? Also, we have templates for almost all of these items (the audit, survey, editorial calendar, and more!), all available in our spiffy new resource center. Browse them all here: https://lnkd.in/g9WAhJcs, or just DM me if you need any of them! ✨ #internalcommunications #internalcommunication

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I think the adage "you don't truly know someone until you live with them," applies equally to businesses. Observing how companies react to market depressions and significant societal changes offers a similar revelation in my opinion. Since 2020, the progression from a period of "listening and learning" to one of accountability, and now to questioning the extent of engagement with social issues, has been fascinating to watch from a broader marketing perspective. This evolution is especially intriguing from my standpoint, where my professional obligations span both fiduciary duties to customers and financial stakeholders. Year over year, the Edelman Trust Barometer indicates that people trust businesses more than NGOs, governments, and media. This established trust positions commemorative months as pivotal times for B2C marketers to make a significant statement through campaigns and CSR initiatives. Despite resistance in 2024, it’s essential for brands to recognize that consumers, particularly Gen Z and millennials — who will represent 48% of global retail spending by 2030 — retain long memories. I believe that brands that choose to support a cause must genuinely commit to their stance to maintain authenticity with these discerning consumers. What do you think? https://lnkd.in/eVQdUNhu #marketing #leadership #branding

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Please excuse me, but I gotta riff about something I feel very passionately about, thats affected me both personally and professionally. In my opinion, automation and AI has already gone too far.... ....as it relates to customer service. What's more frustrating than calling a big company (for the ones who still have #'s) for support, just to speak to a robot for 5 mins, just to tell the representative what you just told the robot... ....and then you want me to stay on to take a quick survey on how your customer support was? Not good. Thanks. At the same time, too often clients tell me they can't get in touch with someone at the tech giants. Not spending millions? Good luck. Spending millions? Great, what can we expect for Q4? An unhappy customer. As companies scale, they tend to look for efficiencies by automating customer support. I'm all for using automation and AI to create efficiencies, but it should be to ENHANCE customer support, not replace it. This is how we look at it at Basis Technologies. Nothing's perfect, things will always come up that require support, but when it does, we don't care what or IF you spend with us, you'll be able to speak to a person, quickly. We have to reverse this trend and I for one, will be playing my part by boycotting any company that doesn't have a human answer my calls. If you need me, I'll be stuck in my apartment without food, transportation, banking, healthcare & many other basic living needs, but someone's gotta take a stand. Who's with me?!

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Bridget R. was on my team at VTS so i know firsthand that she's a killer product marketer, creative thinker, & delightful person some things bridget is good at include... – go-to-market strategy and execution – differentiators, value props, and messaging – creating connectivity btwn departments – making complex things straightfwd & accessible – involving people when they need to be involved – dressing up her dog in silly little outfits PRODUCT MARKETING! i think you should hire bridget! i would hire bridget but i am not hiring a product marketer but when i am hiring a product marketer i will prob try to steal her back from you, heads up, fight me, whatever i'm wicked strong comment or send me a msg if you want an intro to somebody who will truly uplevel your sales, marketing, and product orgs! #productmarketing

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“It’s all about being a step ahead of the consumer. For example, if it’s football Sunday and a consumer adds tortilla chips to their cart, we want to leverage ads to immediately surface a complementary product like salsa. … It’s all about relevance and making ads feel more like engaging content." - Daniel Folkman At Gopuff, we are committed to empowering brands with tools to target specific audiences effectively. Our suite of tools and insights enables partners to reach new to brand (NTB) and lapsed buyers through digital search environments, ensuring personalized and tailored interactions. #retailmedia #marketing #personalization #advertising #commerce #commercemedia Read more: https://lnkd.in/e5icbYdz

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My feed is already inundated with #INBOUND24 recaps, but I can’t not add one more post. As a first-time attendee (and a hopeful repeat attendee), I left Boston feeling inspired about my career, relieved that we (marketers) are all asking the same questions and with so many ready-to-go takeaways INBOUND. Three common threads during conference educational sessions and conversions with fellow attendees: 🤖 On AI: We’ve just scratched the surface of AI. While most of us are using it to help with content ideation, not enough are using it as our virtual assistant — our assistant to offload the mundane and gives us the space and time to focus our energies on being creative. 💻 On Content and Meaurement: Stop creating content that your audience doesn’t like (and also that we don’t like). We all know we shouldn’t do it, but we keep doing it anyway — and a lot of it has to do with external factors. TRUST is a KPI, COMMUNITY is a KPI, CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE is a KPI . . . and to improve those KPIs, being human, relatable and different is non-negotiable. 💡On Leadership: Start inviting dissent into ideas and removing barriers to expressing unique perspectives/lived experiences. As a leader, listen to your intuition and go with your gut, but equip teams with the tools, the goals and the confidence needed to allow them to let them learn, find their voice and chart their own unique path forward. My favorite quotes from speakers: Ryan Reynolds, Maximum Effort, MNTN: “You don’t need to be a d**k to get ahead.” Shannon Sullivan Duffy, Asana: “We waste our time on silly things.” | “You let everyone make one mistake once.” | “Adopt a better, better, never best mentality.” Ben Berkley, The Hustle: “You can’t spam somebody’s house and still be there friend.” Kat Cole, AG1: “Strength is that place we find in a moment when we are required to be our best self.” Jay Schwedelson, GURU Media Hub: Break stuff. Try new things. Be bold. Because “we’re marketers; it’s what we do.” A BIG thank you to Kim Karagosian Chhabria, Molly Alton Mullins and Kellen for making this trip happen for me and to Abram Garcia for the companionship, brainstorming, laughs and advice over three incredible days in Boston. #Marketing #DigitalMarketing

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MAY I interest you in some exciting news for media folks? 🌼 Yahoo DSP advertisers now have access to Kroger audiences for both reach and measurement. We believe in measuring real outcomes. Marketers need every advertising dollar to deliver against meaningful results. Kroger Precision Marketing is committed to being platform-agnostic. Advertisers want to activate purchase-based audiences in their existing programmatic tech. And Yahoo is one of the key leaders in the space. Read more in ADWEEK (link in comments) #KrogerPrecisionMarketing 84.51˚ #RetailMedia #Programmatic

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Product Marketers are effective multi-taskers, even though that might not be an optimal way of working. We often have competing priorities from our different stakeholders. Our job description reads like an org-chart (and maybe even an eye chart!), in and of itself. We are expected to be practical, tactical, and strategic in the same breath. Well-intended project deadlines rarely go off as originally planned. As crazy as this might sound, I wouldn't change a thing. Product Marketing with the right company, and the right products is not only fun, but it's rewarding, challenging, and so worth it! #iykyk #productmarketing #workhardplayhard

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Clarifying my position on using LLMs as a replacement for human participants in market research: I’ve found firsthand that they work extraordinarily well for select use cases. Here's one: We (Marketing Architects) are using them to pretest TV spots in place of human survey panel data. DISCLAIMER: We have 10+ years of in-market data against REAL humans to validate our results. We are NOT just trusting it at face value. It took months of software development, hundreds of hours of prompt engineering, and thousands of a/b tests run through our model to ensure we had a truly special product. Using LLMs without fact-checking or first-party data is risky. We found synthetic audiences accurate and useful for this use case. It saves time and lets us focus on producing more quality creative work. I’m not saying you have to accept or adopt it. Everyone tests and trusts new technology at different times - see the image from Craig Chelius below. But I think sharing evidence of new things in marketing is helpful and fun. I wouldn’t expect anything less than a skeptical and challenging audience on LinkedIn. 😊

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Totally agree that ROAS can be a misleading metric when evaluating true incremental growth. It’s super easy to fall into the trap of thinking a high ROAS directly translates into growth, but focusing on what’s truly adding value—like NTB acquisition—should be a key KPI that all brands on Amazon focus on. As a Media manager, the iDerive platform has been a game changer. This type of data is now easily accessible at a camapign, product, and even keyword level. 🤌🏼📊

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For all my folks interested in Attention, please join us for our discussion and learn from experts in the industry about all things attention and the impact on outcomes!

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You won't ever be alone. This is for all the lonely people. These are the lyrics from the last two years of Kroger Holiday Ads. Holiday Ads that both rank in the System1 top 10 list for predicted in-market effectiveness - 2024 5.6 ⭐ 🎄"The Case of the Disappearing Food" https://lnkd.in/g8xdhKbd 2023 5.0 ⭐ 🎄"Cuisine Exchange" https://lnkd.in/gBfcJzb9 Armed with a repeatable campaign (the Kroji's) and instantly recognizable music, the work allows the viewer to focus on the storytelling with a heightened sense of attention & feeling. As shown below, the story invites you to experience a broad range of emotions resolved with intense positivity for the Brand. There is a reason why Inside Out 2 is the largest-grossing animated film of all time. The audience wants to feel and celebrate feeling the spectrum of emotions. So, who will you call this Holiday? I share #Marketing & #Advertising musings; follow for more. Jon Evans Andrew Tindall Jess M. Melissa Rosenthal Freddie Laughton Colin Jenkinson Genevieve Norris Kerry Collinge DDB North America adam&eveDDB US Kroger Stuart Aitken Jason Ashlock Paulo Junger

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I got interviewed last week. The interviewer asked me what my favorite part of running LockedIn Labs is. I kindly said “IT HAS BEEN AN EPIC EXPERIENCE. And also I can’t just choose one thing.” The trifecta of amazingness I’ve seen since starting last year: 1️⃣ I’m doing EXACTLY what I want to be doing. And this is because I have the wisdom and knowledge from mentors that set the foundation. One of my mentors always told me, ‘Do 70% of what you don’t want to do and 30% of what you do want to do.’ And because I started my career doing just that, I have been able to learn all of the areas of business that I cannot stand - and be good at them. Let’s say you are a fashion designer. There might be certain stitches that are easy to do and look beautiful - and others that are giant pains - but if you learn them, they set you apart from other designers. Because I’ve worked at that 70% - the things that didn’t seem fun or possible - I now can leverage these experiences in leading a business I love. In other words, I have become an expert designer for helping clients with LinkedIn optimization. 2️⃣ The LockedIn Labs team is amazing, and growing quickly. I’m so thankful to the people who have jumped in early. Our trajectory is steep, and we are constantly adding new clients to the roster. And I knew that to be the very best at what we do, taking the time to source good talent was crucial. Let’s say you are a racecar driver. You can be one of the very best at what you do, alone. But when you pull off to the side of the track for a pitstop, you need to have a team you can count on to have that same passion, and that same drive, that you do to win the race. 3️⃣ We are making real, tangible impacts for our clients. One of my favorite examples of this is a client who wanted to embark on a new venture. She wanted something new and different. LockedIn Labs was able to quickly build her brand and expand her network - setting the stage for her to receive several lucrative offers within 4 months. To any of my fellow entrepreneurs out there: I know how it feels to be building something great. Keep going! And if you’re looking for exposure or leads, chat with me about how you can use the beautiful power of LinkedIn.

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Wondering what #digitalstrategy opportunities arise from analyzing search behavior? Plenty. Read my newest post on #search intent to find out. #blog #communications #digitalmarketing

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Hiring for a Director of Engagement Marketing to build Hazel’s engagement and product marketing function from zero (well, 0.25!) to one. Know anyone who fits the bill? Send 'em my way! 🙏 #1: The problem this role is focused on solving:  Over 4 million K-12 students are eligible for Hazel Health’s services, at no cost to their families — and an estimated 600,000 of them have mental healthcare needs that are *not* getting treated today. We’re looking for a curious and critical thinker to lead Hazel’s efforts to connect these children to the care they need, and stem the tide of the growing youth mental health crisis. #2: Who we're looking for: A “general athlete” with a specialized background — bringing expertise in customer engagement and omni-channel lifecycle marketing to Hazel, ideally in a healthcare context (bonus points for a B2B2C model). • You're unquenchably curious. Complex industries, topics, and personas fascinate you, and you have a knack for explaining them to others in simple terms.  • You’re self-directed, with an innate propensity to create order and drive to decisions in unstructured environments.  • You feel excited (rather than overwhelmed) by ambiguity — and feel comfortable building entirely new playbooks, frameworks, and systems (not just running existing ones).  • You are a crisp, compelling storyteller — with a keen instinct for audience-specific value prop identification and positioning, as well as an eye for copywriting and design. • You love making sense of data, and separating the signal from the noise. While you may not be a math whiz (but, great if you are!), you're not intimidated by data or spreadsheets, and can appreciate a good pivot table. You’re able to partner with analytics teams by (a) asking the right questions, and (b) making sense of multiple (sometimes disparate) datasets — recognizing patterns and extracting salient insights to get to the “so what.” https://lnkd.in/epdtFcEZ

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Klaviyo's CDP is taking off 🚀🎉🚀🎉 -- A huge win for brands that want to manage & leverage their data to drive more targeted (and effective) customer interactions. Check out our first case study with Klaviyo CDP + Ruffwear to learn more! https://lnkd.in/g42ZE7bM #klaviyo #cdp #customerdataplatform #marketing #martech #customerretention #CustomerRetentionStrategies #DataDrivenRetention

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