An Interview with Nick Eades, Experienced CCO / CMO

Nick Eades, Chief Commercial Officer at HTEC Ltd., shares his experiences, insights, and advice on the industry-wide shift towards digital-first marketing...

Can you give an introduction to your organisation?

HETC is an innovative British financial technology company in the Convenience and Forecourt market. We design, build, install, and support Retail Management systems and Payments solutions in 5,700 retail sites – processing over 15 billion transactions each year through our data centres.

Can you give an overview of the marketing methods your organisation uses?

We have reinvented our approach to marketing in the past year, focusing on an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) approach. We don’t need 'thousands' of leads – we actually just need a small number of deals,  because our ability to service on-boarding them is something that we’re building in a scalable way. So, everything we do is digital!

What do you think are the key positive effects of digital-first marketing for businesses? 

It has two positive effects, I think. Firstly, as we all know, it’s very measurable. But secondly, that measurability forces you to have really very strong insight into the issues that your customer is facing, and how to communicate that your proposition is uniquely placed (i.e. with a clear, differentiated value proposition) to help them. If you haven’t got the latter, the former simply measures how bad your value proposition is!

What is the main challenge your organisation has faced with digital-first approaches? How have you overcome or navigated this?

Weaning the company off of ‘traditional' marketing always takes time, but once the evidence of successful engagement and strong leads comes through it starts to snowball. The hardest one to change was the desire to go to shows and events, but covid-19 stopped the events while the digital engagement really took off. I doubt that shows and events will ever recover their 'value' as part of the sales and marketing process…

What has been your biggest success story using digital marketing?

Simply, the ability to engage targeted companies with strong content, and the evidence that our solution is transformational, from the comfort of their own desks.

What would your advice be to other businesses in this area? 

Digital ABM is a science, not an art, especially on a one-to-one or one-to-few basis (personally, I don’t think that ABM on a one-to-many basis is actually ABM!). Additionally, my point above about effective communication is the key. You still have to do the proposition hard yards before you go to market. Digital is the last part of puzzle, and – while it has to be done very well – it is only as good as the proposition it conveys. 

Connect with Nick Eades on LinkedIn here.

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