Vainu's CMO: The future belongs to data-driven sales & marketing

It is about time that marketing managers stop relying on their gut feeling. At least according to Mikko Luhtava from Vainu. And it's a fact that data-driven marketing is growing ever stronger. Guessing games can cost you a lot - it's better to build your house on a foundation of insights in the form of data. What Mikko thinks more about the future of marketing, you can read about in this interview.

Mikko Luhtava is Head of Communications for Vainu, a sales intelligence, prospecting and account insights SaaS-platform with a database of over 100 million companies. He works at the company's headquarters in Finland, but has also made detours to the United States during his time as Vice President of Sales for North America.

Which trends will form B2B-marketing in the future?

Similarly to B2C, I believe B2B will become more and more data-driven and hyper-targeted. For example, account-based marketing (ABM) is often talked about, but very few companies actually have ABM campaigns with pointed messages running simultaneously into the accounts they're sales reps are pitching to. The technology's already there, and my guess it's a matter of time before traditional campaigning is replaced, at least in niche industries.
Another trend bubbling under is using third-party intent data to predict purchases and target marketing campaigns. When someone visits G2 Crowd looking for sales prospecting tools, we want to know about it.

Which challenges imply those trends for you as marketing manager?

At Vainu, we're a small marketing team (only 5 people), so it's all about what to focus on ourselves, what to outsource, and what to skip altogether. Using data helps us focus on the things with the highest impact, but sometimes we won't have the resources to test a new marketing channel or content type out.

3) How will your company work with B2B-marketing in 2020?

Our approach will be the same as now, building a foundation that scales across all of our markets through high-quality content that's relevant for our target audience, data-driven salespeople.
We're currently working on an update to our branding and focusing more on PR and paid advertising, and we're always testing different tactics to see their marketing impact.

4) If you look for an agency to help you, what are your demands for that agency?

We're a small, bootstrapped company that measures everything we do. Any agency we work with needs to understand our mindset and have a similar approach for collaboration to work.

5) If you look for a marketing automation-tool, what features should it have?

We currently use HubSpot as our core platform, pretty much to its full force. Any tools we bring on need to fit into our existing workflows and add measurable value to the current setup, as there's always a learning curve and time investment in taking on something new.

Thanks for your insights, Mikko and good luck in your future! If you want to get in touch with Mikko on LinkedIn, you'll find him here!