Ashish Agrawal

Some bits of knowledge that have helped me understand analogies in B2B marketing : - What channels were effective? - What ads (messaging) worked? - What was the buying committee? - What are the identified pain points? - What content performs best for conversion?

I like to use the following tools for understanding the B2B target audience: - Use the CRM to find the buying committee (decision-makers from existing customers - GA4 to understand the In-Market audience buckets and interests as categorized by Google - Sit in sales calls and regular meetings with regional sales teams - HotJar or Microsoft Clarity to understand what is resonating. Also, HotJar can be used to run quick surveys on your website visitors. - SurveyMonkey for surveys - Meltwater for social media listening

I like to read the recent 20 posts on Linkedin from the interviewer and other key senior management. It gives many insights into what is on the minds of the leaders. Take time to research or follow the links shared and soak up the information. Formulate your thoughts on some of the conversation. This leads to meaningful discussion later on. The company handles on Linkedin should be researched too for the latest posts. Ads can also be looked into on Linkedin. Those give insights on what is currently working in marketing for the company. Similar research is to be done on the competition. Why I focus on networks such as LinkedIn and X because it has the most up-to-date information.

At the onset, both the ad consultant and the client understand that the future cannot be predicted and should only take this as educated guidance. Once all parties are in agreement with this the expectations are realistic and more importantly, meaningful conversations can happen. Goals help in giving direction to the ad project and getting a high-level overview of what seems possible. Metrics such as impressions, clicks, conversions and revenue from historical or similar data helps in having meaningful discussion around the budget and ad strategy. It is more important to review and course-correct as the project progresses. Insights and learnings obtained help in better prediction of ad performance going forward.

Social media listening tools such as Meltwater etc. have matured to the point where they can scan the web for your brand and give you all the information about what people are talking about, categorizing it according to diverse sentiments. AI can play a role over here where it can draft an appropriate response at scale to different situations taking into account the brand personality and voice thereby making the responses more relevant. This done at scale through AI will only see increased adoption as digital channels continue to grow.

Getting certified in Google Analytics would be step one. Next would be creating a free website on a platform such as WordPress.com and then connecting it to a Google Analytics account. There is also a demo account available for experimenting with data. I would suggest going through all the different modules and understanding what the different metrics and dimensions mean and what options are available to analyse. Just following the above steps gives a lot of ammunition to showcase data analysis in pitches as well as job interviews. Would suggest going though blog by Avinash Kaushik to further gain insights into data analytics.