A new year brings new opportunities for B2B marketers. Here's one topic to focus on for each month of 2015 from the top B2B marketers in the business.

1. 12 Months of Learning from
12 Top B2B Marketers
Carla Johnson
Author, Speaker, Consultant
Type A Communications

2. @CarlaJohnson
How to Make Big Changes…
A new year brings a clean slate of a new year is 365 days of
possibilities. Part of what gets me excited is taking one idea,
focusing on it, and then putting it into practice little by little.
Huge change all at once can be hugely overwhelming. But
what I find is that huge change really comes from the
accumulation of taking many small steps, whether it’s
becoming more open minded to the ideas of others or how
you think about the work that you do as a marketer.

3. @CarlaJohnson
Through Consistently Small Ones
In 2014, I was lucky to spend a lot of time talking to top B2B
marketers who I always feel live at the head of the comet and
blaze the path for others. While there’s many facets to their
success, I realized that focus is a big part of it. So here’s a list
of 12 things I learned from 12 top B2B marketers – just one
to focus on each month for 2015:

4. @CarlaJohnson
From empowering customers to
empowering employees, Button Bell talks
about how great marketing is really about
great simplification. Much of her focus for
2014 was on simplifying the brand across
the enterprise, from the website
experience to industrial design. That
takes a lot of determination to breakdown
silos, lead and facilitate collaboration,
drive cohesiveness and collaboration and
all the while elevating the impact of
marketing along the way.
Kathy Button Bell
CMO
Emerson
1 Simplification

5. @CarlaJohnson
You have to be excellent at driving growth
for your enterprise. And the only way to
do that is to communicate and then
demonstrate the impact that marketing
can have on the entire organization –
starting with the executive team. to create
a consistent experience, marketing has to
step up and create a core platform to talk
about what growth looks like, translate it
into how that applies to every facet of the
business, and then make that come alive
through experiences for employees and
customers.
Linda Boff
Executive Director
Global Brand Marketing
GE
2 Be a good translator

6. @CarlaJohnson
How we connect with people are the
pipes, but it’s the stories we deliver over
them that tell people what to engage with
and who to believe. Products can be
interchangeable, but what we stand for
differentiates us. It’s the stories we tell
that convey the purpose we have in the
lives of our customers. The brand is our
platform, but we put our customers at the
center of our stories…and that
responsibility is too important to be left
just to marketing. It has to be instilled into
the culture of the company.
Michael Brenner
Head of Strategy
NewsCred
3 Create a culture of content

7. @CarlaJohnson
Aon serves as an intermediary between
insurance companies and buyers so that
buyers can make smarter decisions. For
example, if a company is building a major
facility overseas, they need someone to
help them buy that insurance – enter Aon.
But there’s so much to know about
building materials, soil conditions and
rates in different countries. That’s where
Aon created value and has shifted its
focus from transactions to consulting –
growing taking over the industry’s top
spot and also doubling its revenue
to $11 billion.
Phil Clement
Global CMO
Aon
4 Use content to create value

8. @CarlaJohnson
Marketers deal with a lot of ambiguity and
uncertainty and the path can be blurry at
times. It’s our role to guide our companies
to where the world is going, to provide a
voice. There’s always a new relationship
or solution to figure out. In order to do
that, it means that marketing’s job is
never done; we have to think of ourselves
as being in perpetual motion.
Beth Comstock
CMO
GE
5 Perpetual motion marketing

9. @CarlaJohnson
Too often, marketers miss the point
of technology – it’s not just about
automating processes, it’s about
making it easier to engage with
audiences. Marketing needs a
technology ecosystem that
empowers both sales teams and
customers to have deeply
personalized interactions.
Eduardo Conrado
SVP Marketing & IT
Motorola Solutions
6 Focus on systems of engagement

10. @CarlaJohnson
Marketers need to approach multiple
audiences with an integrated brand
message. What you say across all
channels has to be seamless, and ladder
up to a broader, consistent and deeply
integrated message. It has to be a single
brand with a single voice, but still vibrant
and relevant to meet the needs of specific
audiences. And it’s critical to approach
employee messaging with the same rigor
as B2B and B2C.
Antonio Lucio
Global Chief Marketing and
Communications Officer
Visa
7 Deeply integrate marketing and
corporate communications

11. @CarlaJohnson
The recession hit USG hard. In the midst
of economically disastrous times,
McGovern convinced her CEO to let
marketing have the impact that she knew
it could. Her team revitalized the brand
through a relaunch around “It’s Your
World. Build It.” and tied it to an Olympic
sponsorship. The result? Second quarter
2014 net income of $57 million was more
than double that of the same period the
previous year and the strongest for the
company in the last seven years.
Linda McGovern
Vice President, Marketing
USG
8 Activate your story

12. @CarlaJohnson
Customers believe that sales is 88%
knowledgeable on product, but only 24%
on business expertise. But executives
value sales people with business
expertise 4 times more than product
knowledge. That’s why best-in-class
companies have twice as much training
and business discussions than their
competition. They understand the
importance of closing the business value
gap in conversations with customers and
prospects.
Tim Riesterer
Chief Strategy Officer
Corporate Visions
9 Understand your value gap

13. @CarlaJohnson
Emotions play a bigger part in the buying
process than either buyers or marketers
want to admit. But devotion to brands
begins and ends with an emotional
connection. Buyers are people, people
are humans and humans are emotional
beings. To convey emotion, you have to
communicate in the natural language of
your audience, looking at specific words
and phrases that are personally
appealing.
Karen Walker
Senior Vice President
Cisco
10 Create emotional content

14. @CarlaJohnson
As a comedy writer and stand-up
comedian, Washer talks about how the
words of actor, writer and teacher Del
Close made a difference to him in the
world of corporate communications and
content marketing. “It’s fear that keeps us
from our best. Fear to be different, fear of
not getting promoted, fear of failure.” But
when you can muster the courage to
follow that fear, what may be the most
terrifying moments in your life (and
career) may also turn into the most
rewarding.
Tim Washer
Senior Marketing Manager
Cisco
11 Follow the fear

15. @CarlaJohnson
If people don’t hear a focus about a
specific purpose, then they focus on
activity. When marketers understand the
end goal it’s easier for them to exercise
discipline and say “no” to distractions.
Without distractions, they can produce
higher quality ideas and outcomes, rather
than slowly degrading toward high
volumes of low-quality content that no
one ends up using. When they say “no” to
distractions, they ultimately say “yes” to
greater impacts within and for the
company.
Mark Wilson
Senior Vice President
Global Marketing
Blackberry
12 Say “no” more often

16. @CarlaJohnson
What can you do in 2015?
Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist
who’s credited with changing the way we study human
cultures. She was a frequent speaker and featured author in
mainstream media during the 1960s and 1970s. One of her
most notable quotes highlights what marketers should keep
in mind when they face the frustration of learning, and then
implementing, new ideas within their own organizations…

17. @CarlaJohnson
“Never doubt that a small group of
thoughtful, committed citizens can
change the world. Indeed, it is the only
thing that ever has.”
Margaret Mead, Cultural Anthropologist
1901-1978

18. 1. Simplify something
2. Become a translator
3. Create a content culture
4. Use content to create value
5. Stay in perpetual motion
6. Create systems of engagement
7. Integrate with communications
8. Activate your story
9. Understand the value gap
10. Create emotional content
11. Feel the fear
12. Say “no” more often
@CarlaJohnson
Pick one thing
and start
small…

19. @CarlaJohnson
Become a “committed citizen”
What can you, as a citizen
committed to the company for
which you work, change about your
world?

20. Let’s Connect!
Carla Johnson
Author, Speaker, Consultant
Type A Communications
+011 (720) 344-0987
Carla@TypeACommunications.com
@CarlaJohnson
www.TypeACommunications.com