Mastercard has completely overhauled its B2B marketing function over the past seven years, freeing it from its previous role as a sales service provider to a team seen as critical to growth.
On joining Mastercard as its 2017 Vice President of B2B Marketing Lisa Maxwell said The B2B marketing function was still “in its infancy” and the wider business, especially sales, believed that the role of their B2B marketers was simply to deliver “pretty pictures”.
Speaking at the IAA B2B Brand Summit in London yesterday (October 17), she said the sales team would often say “I have to go to a customer tomorrow, can you please make the tire look nice? “.
Seven years later, the marketing function has evolved tremendously, which she believes has come from prioritizing human relationships, both with B2B buyers and internal stakeholders.
She started by running an employee survey to gain better insight into the issues. One of the feelings that emerged was that the sales team did not feel able to talk about all products and solutions in an effective way.
To combat this, the marketing function decided to “join hands” with the sales team and the Mastercard employee training function to tackle the problem together, rather than trying to solve the problem alone.
She said this process of coming together involved building foundational materials for the sales team that everyone could use to better understand the B2B solutions the company offers.
Maxwell added that the sales team could then measure the mood of the sales team before and after the training to get data on the developing confidence of the sales function. “Now the sales teams feel extremely familiar with all the products and solutions,” she said, adding that the holistic approach to training has become one of the systems Mastercard uses “consistently” to create synergy between teams.
Looking outwards
From a consumer point of view, Mastercard is a well-known brand. Many people carry a card with its distinct red and yellow logo in their wallet, and the proposition is clear. But the B2B challenge is more nuanced, Maxwell said.
When she joined the brand, she was tasked with helping companies better understand that Mastercard is “more than just a card company” and that its offering also includes other financial solutions and services for businesses.
As internal stakeholder relations improved, Maxwell took the same approach of prioritizing human relationships to help grow the brand’s B2B business with customers.
“For example, when you go to a client meeting with LinkedIn, you meet someone who happens to work in an organization, but you have to think, ‘how do I speak to you as a whole person, as someone who probably has a Mastercard on pocket, but who is also interested in buying a service or solution from Mastercard’,” she said.
She added that it is crucial to start by connecting on a human level and then extend this to the services and solutions Mastercard can provide.
One of the ways the company centers the human aspect is by carefully considering what consumers and partner companies want.
During the Grammys, Mastercard went, for example. along with ride-sharing company Lyft, one of its B2B partners, to launch a purpose-driven campaign to encourage more people to use Mastercard – every time someone at the event paid for Lyft with their Mastercard, a tree would be planted. The campaign was also tied to social good, which helped engage consumers emotionally, she said.
Maxwell said the goal of the partnership was to understand and align the goals of both consumers and partner businesses. She added: “This shows how centering the human in the story helps both the consumer side and the B2B side of the business.”