IOT Insider Hirers New Editor
IOT Insider has welcomed a new Editor to the team, Caitlin Gittins.
With three years of experience within the B2B sector, Caitlin's experience spans several sectors, including agriculture, food production and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Caitlin is passionate about both writing and reading, and her technological interests include the intersection of technology with our daily surroundings and its integration into larger industrial and infrastructural contexts. She is particularly interested in the potential ramifications of new technological advances, including the deployment of 5G networks.
It's always great to see editorial teams expanding, and we wish Caitlin the best of luck in her new role.
For more information about Caitlin, please click here.
Future Horizons: May Semiconductor Update
We are delighted to share May's semiconductor update from Future Horizons. Find out more about the current outlook of the market below:
Executive Overview
March’s total IC sales were up 22.1 percent in value vs. the same period last year, with total Discretes down 9.9 percent and total Opto down 8.9 percent. The overall year-on-year total Semiconductor market grew 15.7 percent.
By comparison, the same datapoints for February were plus 14.3 percent for total Semiconductors, plus 23.1 percent for total ICs, minus 22.3 percent for total Discretes, minus 12.7 percent for total Opto.
The overall semiconductor year-on-year growth in value, at 15.7 percent, was the fifth consecutive month of double-digit growth since the market turned positive in September 2023.
These double-digit growth numbers clearly look like a strong market recovery but, as can be seen for the relevant charts later on, with the IC unit demand, Analog, Discrete and Opto sectors still stubbornly weak, this apparent ‘market recovery’ is predicated by a strong rebound in IC ASP monthly annualised growth.
Given the long-term average ASP growth is zero, our concern is this ASP rebound is purely a counter reaction to the previous year’s period of harsh ASP decline. There is a real danger this will evaporate during 2H-2024 as fast as it suddenly appeared.
Memory and AI processors aside, demand in the other IC sectors, along with Analog, Discretes and Opto, remains sluggishly weak. As we have cautioned many times before in this Report, you cannot call a real market recovery without IC units and Discretes growth.
Market Outlook
As commented on in last month’s column, our 3 percent growth assumption for Q1-2024 was looking optimistic. With the first quarter data now in, our fears were confirmed … the first quarter crashed, wiping US$13 billion off the quarter, which, in turn, reduced our full year forecast by US$50 billion.
Low unit sales, driven by ‘take of pay’ long-term price agreements (LTAs) from the Covid-boom era, are exacerbating industry attempts to rein back excess inventory.
Just like the emperor’s new clothes, the supposed 2024 Super-Cycle has evaporated in a puff of smoke. It always was a delusion, Q1 removed all doubt.
Future Horizons hosted their spring Forecast Webinar at the beginning of May. For the webinar highlights, click here and watch the full webinar by clicking here.
For any further details, please reach out to the Future Horizons team.
Datateam Business Media Acquires Two New Publications
Datateam Business Media has acquired the School Building and MMC publications following the retirement of Lyn O'Donnell at Waverly Publications.
Datateam is no stranger to acquisitions, having continually grown its portfolio over the last decade, adding publications such as Electronics World to the fold.
Although both School Building and MMC are now part of Datateam, Building Specifier, the online publication, will continue to be published by Waverly Publications.
The sale of these publications continues to show Datateam's commitment to growth, and the building of a diverse portfolio that covers several sectors. We look forward to seeing the direction Datateam will take the publications in the near future.
Procurement Pro: A Great Success From Electronic Specifier
In February, Electronic Specifier launched its new magazine, Procurement Pro, the newest 'go-to' guide for those within the world of procurement in the electronic components market.
The first edition of the publication covered a wide variety of topics, including semiconductor analysis and commentary from the Chairman of the Electronic Components Supply Network (ecsn).
Following the launch, the print version of Procurement Pro made its debut at two of the biggest events within the industry, the Applied Power Electronics Conference 2024 (APEC 2024), hosted in February at Long Beach, California, and embedded world 2024, hosted earlier this month in Nuremberg, Germany. But that's not all, coming summer 2024, Procurement Pro will also be launching as a website. The website will offer deeper discussions of topics covered within the magazine and provide industry insights.
With the publication currently distributing quarterly, the next issue will be ready to read this May. Those attending The Electronic Distributor Show (EDS) at the Mirage, in Las Vegas from 21st to 24th May 2024, will be able to meet the Procurement Pro team and receive their own copy of the magazine.
Congrats to the team at Procurement Pro!
Success for embedded world 2024
It has been two weeks since embedded world and the results are in! The exhibition and conference were another great success, with a record attendance of 32,000 visitors from more than 80 countries and over 1,100 exhibitors from over 50 countries.
The two parallel conferences which consisted of a total of 81 sessions and 17 classes, attracted 1,871 participants and featured speakers from 45 countries.
"The past three days were simply great," commented Executive Director Benedikt Weyerer on Thursday evening at the close of embedded world 2024. "We were able to observe thousands of happy faces and in-depth conversations – both on the stands as well as in the packed halls and aisles."
The Napier team contributed to these staggering numbers, with five members of our team in attendance. We met with over 30 different editors across 50 meetings and had the chance to meet many of our European-based clients face-to-face.
There's no denying that embedded world is a staple of our industry, and has long been regarded as the ‘go-to’ place to gain insight into embedded system technologies. It was great to see the event busy and in full force, and we look forward to next year's show.
embedded world 2025 has been confirmed and will take place from March 11th - 13th 2025.
It's Nearly Time For Focus On PCB 2024!
The third edition of 'Focus on PCBs - From Design to Assembly' is taking place on May 15th -16th 2024. The event is the only European B2B trade fair focused on the world of printed circuits.
The show will be taking place at the Fiera di Vicenza in Italy, and expects attendees from all over the world with 116 companies confirmed.
Two days of the conference will offer 10 technical presentations from various leading companies within the printed circuit industry. Talks will look at PCB Design and Assembly and will provide insights into the processes faced by electronic designers. The final day of the conference will spotlight Artificial Intelligence, investigating its impact on the electronics industry. There will also be 26 specialist forum meetings, which are technical workshops dedicated to relevant issues like sustainability and reshoring.
One unique feature of Focus on PCBs, is the recruiting service, Focus on Career. Companies attending PCB will be able to share details of the professionals they are looking for, with job offers being published at the fair and online.
Focus on PCBs is not to be missed, and we look forward to hearing about the outcome of the event!
Future Horizons: April Semiconductor Update
We're happy to share this month's extract of Future Horizons April report on the semiconductor market. Continue reading to learn more about the market's current outlook.
Executive Overview
2019, pre-Covid, saw the IC sector shrink, whilst Opto boomed and Discretes remained flat, reversing positions in the first half of 2020, with Opto in decline whilst IC growth recovered, with all sectors back in step by the second half of 2020.
The reverse situation seems to be happening right now, with ICs in full growth mode, whilst Discretes and Opto are in decline. We believe this trend will run its course over the coming months with all sectors back in step by the second half of this year … unfortunately all being more likely in decline..
Market Update
At our January Industry Update webinar, we presented our official forecast for 2024, namely a 16 percent growth in value, with the Bull and Bear scenarios being plus 20 and plus 12 percent respectively.
Our concern at that time was that this growth rate was inflated by ASPs that were being measured against 2023’s severely collapsed values, and as such the ‘recovery’ was a statistical quirk of the math and not genuine market growth.
Regular readers of our reports will know we have constantly counselled of this danger and of our belief that, without a recovery in unit sales, this dollar ‘growth’ will one day evaporate in a puff of smoke. It looks like that day is now coming into sight.
Given the worsening IC unit shipment situation, with no end yet in sight to this route, it is looking increasingly likely that our forecast concerns were valid.
Other than Memory, which is now in a genuine recovery phase, sadly all the other IC product segments, along with Discretes and Opto, are not doing as well, with the monthly annualized growth rates all on a downward trend.
We commented last month that our 3 percent growth assumption for Q1-2024 was starting to look optimistic. With the first two months’ data now in, our fears are confirmed … Q1 will now shrink.
Future Horizons will be hosting a spring update webinar on May 7th 2024, which will present an updated forecast for 2024. For more information and to review previous webinars, click here.
For any further details, please reach out to the Future Horizons team.
Electronique Composants Instrumentation Announces New Editor-in-Chief
ECINews's current Editor-in-Chief, Alain Dieul, has announced that he will be stepping down from the role, and will be passing the torch to Nicolas Feste, who has several years of experience working within the electronics sector as an engineer. Alain will continue to work alongside Nicolas, supporting him whilst he takes charge of his new post as Editor-in-Chief.
We look forward to liaising with Nicolas and wish both him and Alain the best of luck.
March Semiconductor Market Update from Future Horizons
As an agency that works with some of the leading companies within the technology industry, it is important that we stay up-to-date on the industry, including trends and the outlook of technology markets. So, we were excited to have the opportunity to share an extract of Future Horizons March report on the semiconductor market:
Executive Overview
IC ASPs continued to drive the recovery, up 34.7 percent vs. January 2023. They were also up 7.6 percent vs. December 2023, which was untypical for the first month of the quarter.
At the same time, IC unit sales fell 13.9 percent vs. December 2023, again unusual for the first month of the quarter, and were also down 10.4 percent vs. January 2023.
With IC unit demand still in decline, the current furor over the supposed chip market ‘recovery’ needs to be treated with extreme caution bordering on the irrational.
Market Update
January saw IC ASPs rebound from December’s dramatic downward correction, continuing their now eight-month long recovery climb, up 7.6 percent vs. December 2023.
At the same time, IC unit shipments were 27.1 percent lower than the May 2022 8.2 billion maxed-out capacity peak and 16.4 percent lower than the overall long-term trend line, a marked deterioration over last month’s 3.9 percent number.
This is the first time since records began that ASPs have led a market recovery. In the normal course of events, unit growth recovers first, with ASPs following ‘one-year later’. There is no obvious underlying reason for this behaviour, quite the opposite, it flies in the face of fundamental economic supply and demand pricing theory.
Either it will prove to be a curious quirk of statistics or a fundamental, but as yet undetermined, radical shift in market behaviour. Our bet is firmly on the former not the latter, especially given the overall global economic uncertainty.
Hopes that the US Federal Reserve would start dropping interest rates towards the end of March were dashed when the most recent inflation data rose at its fastest pace in almost a year, signaling a still bumpy road ahead against a robust labour market, strong growth and a resilient American consumer background.
So far, central banks have managed to successfully walk the fine line between pushing up interest rates to bring down inflation but not to the point of triggering a recession. The chances of a soft landing for the global economy are still strong but the overall economic outlook remains decidedly weak.
As one of the most respected semiconductor industry analysts across the globe, Future Horizons report provides some excellent insight into what’s currently happening in the semiconductor market. To find out how to access the full report, please click here.
Future Horizons will be hosting a spring update webinar on May 7th 2024. For more information and to review previous webinars, click here.
For any further details, please reach out to the Future Horizons team.
WEKA Fachmedien Official Media Partner of embedded world
WEKA Fachmedien has announced that they are once again the official media partner of embedded world.
Taking place from April 9th-11th in Nuremberg Germany, the show will host a range of experts, professionals, and companies from the embedded industry.
As media partner, WEKA Fachmedien will provide daily analysis and coverage, publishing the official daily embedded world newspaper throughout the event.
The media house will also host the 17th Media Summit, taking place on April 9th, at 2 pm in room Seoul, NCC East. The speakers, Prof. Matthias Spörrle and Matthäus Hose, will undertake a lecture, presenting their analysis of our accelerated age.
The 22nd edition of the embedded world Conference will take place throughout the show. This features 243 presentations, 17 classes and two keynotes covering all aspects of the development and application of embedded systems.
On the second and third day of the show, the Electronics Displays Conference will take place. Designed for experts and luminaries within the display industry, the programme will consist of eight keynotes that will highlight current industry trends.
As always, embedded world is not a show to be missed, and we're looking forward to attending the event in April to hear the latest insights and trends from the industry.
EEPower Introduces First EEPower Day
This May, EETech will run its first-ever annual EEPower Day, a conference designed for power engineers. Taking place on May 2nd, EEPower Day is a one-day virtual conference, with unique content being published throughout the week of the event.
Coverage will feature innovative news updates, and educational and technical content aligning with EEPower's theme: Powering the Energy Transition.
With over 11,000 planned attendees, the event will offer a unique opportunity for companies to increase awareness via virtual booths, and generate leads from live webinar sessions.
Here at Napier, we love to see new events take place within the industry. With the conference using a similar format to Industry Tech Days, we are sure this will be a successful and valuable event for the industry.
For more information on the event and how you can get involved, please get in touch.
Alfred Vollmer: Editor in Chief and Freelancer for Bodo's Power System
Alfred Vollmer, a well-known and respected journalist within the industry, has announced his new role as Editor-in-Chief at Bodo's Power Systems.
Alfred will be responsible for all main editorial elements, supported closely by Bodo, as well as Holger Moscheik who will focus on all other activities outside the pure editorial responsibilities.
Alfred's current introductory editorial is only available to read on Bodo's Power until the end of February, which will then be followed by his next editorial on the 1st March.
In addition to his new position, from the 1st of March, Alfred will also be available for new freelance work following a six-month break.
We wish Alfred all the best in his new role!
PowerUP 2024: Aspencore and Tecno's New Partnership
AspenCore and Tecno, have announced their partnership as organisers for the PowerUP and Fortronic Conference and Exhibition, which will take place this September in Milan.
As a two-day event, the conference will take place on September 18th and 19th 2024 at the NH Milano Congress Centre. Those who cannot attend in person will have the opportunity to experience the two-day conference and exhibition virtually on October 9th and 10th 2024.
Aiming for an immersive experience, the conference will explore pivotal themes within the industry. This will include topics such as power semiconductors, power management, sensors, converters, and tools for test and measurement.
The conference will provide keynote sessions by global industry leaders, panel discussions and technical presentations on emerging tools and measurement technology, and the opportunity to delve into discussions like reducing carbon footprints through innovative materials. Visitors will also have the opportunity to network with peers and industry professionals from across the globe.
Each day will follow a key theme with day one focusing on ' Power Electronics design - developments, applications and the future' and day two covering 'Power conversion for energy transition.'
“We are proud to start this collaboration, which brings an international scope to Fortronic,” said Elena Baronchelli, general manager of Tecno. “We are confident that this is just the first step toward a successful partnership with AspenCore.”
Vice president and publisher of AspenCore, Cyrus Krohn, added “We are excited about our further expansion into Europe through our partnership with Tecno. We’re looking forward to using the power of our combined networks to bring about new ideas and long-lasting value to the market.”
It is great to see AspenCore and Tecno working together to build an event that will educate and inform the industry. We're looking forward to seeing the fantastic insights that will be revealed at the show, and hearing what we are sure will be great feedback from the industry.
For comprehensive logistical details and agenda information, visit powerup.fortronic.it and www.powerup-expo.com.
Electronic Specifier: Introducing Procurement Pro
Electronic Specifier has officially launched the first issue of Procurement Pro. The new magazine will highlight the elaborate and fast-paced reality of the procurement industry.
Launched as a subsidiary of Electronic Specifier, Procurement Pro aims to be one of the ‘go-to’ guides for industry professionals.
The electronics component market faces many challenges, including evolving technological requirements, geopolitical tensions, supply chain disruptions and many more. These all require a new approach from procurement specialists and the new publication offers solutions to these challenges through content which communicates expert insights, analysis and leadership perspectives. The publication covers a range of topics from global market trends and procurement technology innovations to supply chain management best practices.
Procurement pro will be issued on a quarterly basis and will include future topics like Environmental Sustainability, Regulation, Supply Chain Management, Risk Management and Obsolete Parts.
Here at Napier, we were excited to see the first-ever Procurement Pro launched and look forward to seeing the future success of the publication unfold.
ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS Announces New Editorial Trainee
ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS has welcomed a new trainee to their editorial team. Michael Richter took up his trainee role at the publication this month after graduating with a Communications Engineering degree. Michael was previously a simulation engineer at the Bose Group.
In his new role at ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS, Michael will be focusing on the editorial topics of power electronics and drive technology.
Congratulations to Michael on his new role!
Power Systems Design Celebrates 20 Years
Congratulations to Power Systems Design (PSD) which is celebrating its 20th anniversary.
As one of the leading independent publishers and content developers for the global power electronics community, PSD has built a global community of over 150,000 engineers in power, providing invaluable resources and knowledge for the past two decades.
Congratulations to PSD, we can’t wait to see what you do in the next 20 years!
Elektor Acquires European Business Press
Elektor International Media BV (Elektor) has announced the acquisition of the European Business Press (EBP), a leading publisher in the B2B electronics sector for Europe. Titles such as eeNews Europe and ECI Electronique will now sit under the Elektor media house.
Both EBP and Elektor will continue to work individually with their current teams, promising to maintain business continuity alongside growth and collaboration. With offices in Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands, the expansion of the organisation will be led by Managing Director of Elektor, Erik Jansen.
The merge will also see the accession of Jansen to the Publisher of eeNews Europe. He will be taking over from Andre Rousselot following his retirement after 42 years in publishing. Andre will assist as a consultant throughout 2024 to support a smooth transition.
Jansen commented: "We are excited to welcome EBP into the Elektor family. This acquisition aligns perfectly with our strategy to broaden our reach in the B2B electronics publishing market."
EBP's existing global sales organization will remain in place, and the acquisition will focus on maximising mutual strengths, focusing on opportunities such as traffic and database growth.
The acquisition reinforces Elektor's strategy to gradually expand its influence and expertise in the global electronics publishing sector. It's clear to see that this will be a positive move for the industry, with the combination of two fantastic editorial teams. We look forward to seeing the development of EBP under Elektor, and the approach they take together moving into the future.
For more information about Elektor and EBP, click here.
Christmas Charity Donations From Napier
For the last few Christmases, Napier has made charitable donations rather than sending client gifts. From a select three, we invite our clients to vote for their favourite charity, of which we then distribute our donations in proportion to the votes for each charity.
So we were delighted to once again make our charity donations for Christmas in 2023, donating 41.5% of our pot to Médecins Sans Frontières, 21% to St. Wilfred’s Hospice and 12.5% to WWF.
We’d like to thank all our clients who took the time to vote and contribute to Napier’s decision.
Flash Memory Summit Announces Rebrand
Flash Memory Summit (FMS) has rebranded to reflect the ever-evolving landscape of memory and storage technologies. Relaunching as FMS: the Future of Memory and Storage, the change marks a recognition that the memory and storage industry is rapidly changing beyond traditional flash memory.
Driven by emerging advancements like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and high-performance computing, the memory and storage industry is undergoing rapid changes which has fuelled FMS's decision to rebrand.
The rebrand will change several elements of the event, including the conference and exhibition, which will cover a broad spectrum of storage applications, embracing not only flash memory but also emerging memory technologies that play a crucial role in the storage ecosystem.
Attendees can also expect to see enhanced networking opportunities and to view the latest products and solutions in memory and storage, with insights into future trends and technological breakthroughs.
CEO Kat Pate, said: “We are pleased to make it official by rebranding the event. We know this change will bring continued growth for FMS, and we look forward to welcoming new companies.”
The FMS: the Future of Memory and Storage event is due to take place on August 6-8th 2024.
We look forward to seeing the event take place under the new rebranding, and the great feedback we are sure it will receive from the industry.
Budapest Olympic Centre to Host InnoElectro 2024
This year, the publisher of ELEKTRONET will organise InnoElectro 2024 alongside the National Electronics Society of Hungary. The event will take place at the Olympic Centre in Budapest, on the 23rd-25th April 2024.
InnoElectro provides a platform for professionals involved in creating and manufacturing electronics-based solutions, from design houses to manufacturers and distributors, to discuss their knowledge, network and browse new partnership opportunities.
The event will host the IoT Live Show this year, as well as run the SMTA conference as part of the three-day event.
For the second consecutive year, the event will award the InnoElectro Grand Prize in recognition of the best products and electronic solutions presented at the show. Exhibitors and sponsors of the event can put forward their nominations.
We look forward to hearing about InnoElectro this year and the great insights from the industry.
Next Mobility and ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS Announce New Editor
Next Mobility and ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS has welcomed Stefanie Eckardt as its new Editor.
Stefanie is no stranger to the industry, and is an extremely experienced editor in the Automotive sector, having previously been Editor-in-Chief at Hanser Automotive for three years. Before this, she was also at WEKA for nine years, working on the Elektronik Automotive publication.
Congratulations to Stefanie on her new role!
New Semiconductor Publication To Launch Q1 2024
A new semiconductor magazine has been announced for 2024, titled Global Fabs. Due to launch in Q1 of this year, Global Fabs will be a new global semiconductor manufacturing website and digi-magazine.
The new publication will act as a dedicated source for information on semiconductor fabrication, providing the latest news, market developments, as well as technology and policy updates in the European Union, the USA and worldwide.
Here at Napier, we always love to see the development of a new publication available to the industry. With it focused on the semiconductor sector specifically, the publication is sure to cover some interesting stories. We look forward to the launch and reading the first copy very soon.
The Engineering Network Welcomes Industry Expert Sidney Hamilton-Williams
Industry sales expert, Sidney Hamilton-Williams, has joined the team at The Engineering Network (TEN) as Portfolio and Events Manager. Her new role will cover TEN's FoodManufacturing.Live specialist event, and its associated website FoodManufacturing.net.
With Sidney having previously worked at Western Business Publishing, TEN's Managing Director Luke Webster commented that Sidney "brings with her talents and skills that have been well recognised across the industrial publishing and events sector for many years, and is already acquainted with many of the industry leaders selling into the UK food manufacturing sector."
Congratulations to Sidney on joining the TEN team! We wish you all the best in your new role and look forward to working with you.
Forbes B2B Marketing Group Named Best New Group
At Napier, it's no secret that we are passionate about learning and sharing knowledge, especially within the B2B marketing landscape. We are always looking for different ways to contribute to communities, as we see the immense value these communities bring by members supporting each other in the sharing and building of knowledge across multiple B2B sectors.
This is why we were delighted to learn that the Forbes B2B marketing group has received the 2023 Q3 and Q4 Member Leader Award. Led by Napier's very own Managing Director, Mike has grown the community, with a focus on sharing his knowledge about the B2B marketing landscape and encouraging members to participate.
Congratulations to Mike and all those in the group, and good luck for the next round of the Member Leader Awards!
A Napier Podcast Interview With Nathan Schlaffer - MarketMate AI
Nathan Schlaffer, CEO and Founder of MarketMate AI, joined Mike to discuss his generative AI marketing automation platform that enables B2B marketers to connect with their buyer personas.
Nathan delves into Marketmate’s unique features, and how users can create buyer personas on the platform, which enable them to refine messaging and use generative AI which is tailored directly for the persona. He also shares practical advice on how to use AI to enhance marketing strategy and execution.
Listen to the podcast now via the links below:
- Marketing B2B Technology on Apple Podcasts
- Marketing B2B Technology on Spotify
- Marketing B2B Technology on napierb2b.com
About MarketMate AI
MarketMate AI is an AI marketing solution specifically for B2B. The software is unlike any other AI platform and is a marketing solution which tailors content for the clients wants and needs.
About Nathan
As the CEO and Co-Founder of MarketMate AI, Nathan is an advocate about the use of AI to connect marketing and sales. He brings ten years of expertise in aiding B2B SaaS firms in revenue growth and marketing team expansion.
Time Stamps
[00:42.00] – Nathan discusses his history and MarketMate AI.
[05:02.00] – Find out how to use AI to generate content for marketing campaigns.
[09:37.00] – Nathan discusses creating buyer personas with MarketMate AI and refining messaging.
[14:52.00] – Learn how MarketMate AI can be used for branding
[15:50.00] – Nathan shares the story behind MarketMate AI.
Quotes
“If you can take an AI model and train it on that market knowledge and insight, imagine the productivity gains you can get for having a new hire learn from the AI and have it write content.”
Follow Nathan:
Nathan Schlaffer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanschlaffer/
MarketMate AI website: https://www.marketmateai.com/
MarketMate AI on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketmate-ai-llc/
Follow Mike:
Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/
Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/
Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our podcast for more discussions about the latest in Marketing B2B Tech and connect with us on social media to stay updated on upcoming episodes. We'd also appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform.
Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast - The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547
Transcript: Interview with Nathan Schlaffer - MarketMate AI
Mike: Thanks for listening to marketing B2B Tech, the podcast from Napier, where you can find out what really works in B2B marketing today. Welcome to marketing B2B technology, the podcast from Napier. Today I'm joined by Nathan Nathan Schlaffer. Nathan is the CEO and co-founder of MarketMate. Welcome to the podcast, Nathan.
Nathan: Thank you, Mike. Excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
Mike: It's great to have on the podcast. I mean, we always like to start off by finding out how people got to the position they are today. So can you give us a little bit of background? Bit of a potted career history?
Nathan: Yeah, sure. So I first started out in marketing, you know, 14 years ago, is my first job. And I fell in love with technology and storytelling. So throughout my life, and specifically, over the past 10 years, I've really focused on B2B marketing, and technology companies like software companies, networking companies, and telecommunications companies. And one thing I realised as I was at B2B companies is a lot of the problems were the same is, hey, how do we create consistent messaging across our company? How do we align sales and marketing around a concept of value propositions? And how do we execute on a content strategy so that we can grow our demand generation and attract leads and high quality leads that result in opportunity? So my passion has really been at the intersection of technology and B2B marketing. And that's why I started this company market mate with my colleague, David is we we were so excited by chat CBT and the prospect of automating one of the day to day things that marketers do. But we realised that Trump engineering is hard. It's like an art and a science and you don't always get the output you want on the first ground. So what we wanted to do was, essentially make it easier for people to automate entire marketing projects without having to learn how to prompt so we created a generative AI platform market made a AI that does just that.
Mike: So I know people who've played with chat GPT, you know, sometimes you ask it to do something as magic Other times, you have to work really hard. So I totally get that issue around prompt engineering. You say you're a generative AI company for B2B marketing? Can you just tell us a little bit more about the functionality of marketing like what it actually does for marketers?
Nathan: Yeah, so we have a four step framework that we follow for marketers. And we use a handy acronym we call lead. And we call it the buyer centred AI framework. And we start with a company's buyer personas, much like when we're onboarding a new marketer, we teach them about who our target audience is, what job titles they have, what their pain points are, what motivates them what their KPIs are, how they measure success. So we take an AI model, and we train it on your buyer persona. So now it understands your customer pain points. It understands their needs, and it speaks your customer language. Now after we train an AI model on your persona, then we use AI to help create value propositions for your products to help create product positioning statements. So how do we differentiate your brand or your solution from every other solution on the market? What makes you unique? So following that lead framework, it's learned your buyer persona, it's enhanced your messaging, and now it knows your messaging. Now, it's ready to automate. And that's the eighth part automate your content development. So one of the big qualms we've heard with AI generated content is it just sounds artificial, like, No, it's not speaking my customer language. So we have an AI model that knows your customer language knows your value proposition. Now we can craft press releases for you. Now it can write blog posts. Now it can create ads that will really resonate with your audience and generate higher quality leads. And then the final step in the process is called drive sales enablement with guardrails. For CMOs and B2B Marketing Leaders. One of the things that we've encountered is great, I have a new sales rep, but they don't understand my target market. They don't understand my value proposition. So how do I onboard them quickly so they can close more deals? So what we've done is we've taken market made and trained it, how to write prospect emails, how to create an elevator pitch, how to ask good qualifying questions to identify needs and pain points with your prospect. So we call it drive sales enablement with guardrails, because we're making sure that the content and the emails and the sales communication is aligned with your company's messaging and tailored for your buyer persona. So that's essentially in a nutshell how market mate works.
Mike: So that's really interesting. So it sounds like you're doing something a little bit different to, you know, some of the other products like writer and Jasper, who let you feed content, but they don't actually train the model on your particular audience, for example. I mean, can you just explain a little bit more about what you're doing that's really unique and maybe they a bit deeper into how you do it. Absolutely.
Nathan: So you hit the nail on the head, Mike is Jasper writer and some of those, what we call point solutions. Just focus on, tell me what topic you want to write about. And I'll write a blog post for you. But without the proper context on who your audience is, what their needs are, maybe what some of the market trends are in your industry, for example, and I'll use this as an example to explain how we're working with a company called player zero, which is a product intelligence platform that helps take customer feedback and prioritise product releases based on what customers want and what features they desire. So one of the things that we did for them is first, we started by creating a buyer persona, so they target product management. So we created a persona called Victor, the VP of Product Management, who's concerned about product releases, he's concerned about the business success of product launches, who is concerned about aggregating customer feedback and using that to inform roadmap decisions. So we create that persona. Now his goal a player zero, and this is speaking with Max, he's the head of product at player zero. Now he has a big product launch. So he wants to design a press release to make a big splash in the market. He wants to write a blog post, he wants to create sales collateral, like a one pager that describes his value proposition. So what we did then is we use market maker to say here's the buyer persona, Victor, the VP of product, generate content ideas for top of funnel, middle of funnel and bottom of funnel. So across the customer journey, he has content to educate them on what players there is consideration content to say, Hey, why are you better than other alternatives and decision content, say, Let's book a demo call. So we essentially use market mate. And we press this button called generate content ideas, and a generated bottom. And then like a menu, you choose what content you want. And then you press WRITE content for me, and it generates a campaigns worth of content for his product launch in 20 minutes. So it's really a game changer. I've had some customers say, you know, instead of spending weeks generating content, this gets us 80% of the way there, and it's 20 minutes. So we're really doing something different and unique than other writing platforms in that we're understanding your audience and training an AI to not sound artificial.
Mike: I mean, that sounds great. Presumably what you're doing, if you're using I mean, I guess you're using the GPT blush language model or something, and what you're doing is trying to customise it. Is that right?
Nathan: Right, so that we have several large language models on the back end that are powering market mate one is GBT, we're also using Google. And we're using Cloud to from anthropic, which is one other one of the widely used platforms. And the reason we use several is one, we don't want to be too dependent on one AI platform, we saw some of the drama with open AI and kind of the risks of being on one platform. But then another reason as well is different platforms are better for different purposes. For example, jet, GBT is great at short form contents. Cloud Two is better for marketing recording, because it can ingest, you know, 100 pages worth of content, if you upload a marketing report, or a research report and say summarise some insights from my white paper, it can do it for you. And then Google is better. In other things, it tends to produce more grammatically correct tax, it's better at translation. So different API's have different strengths. So we're trying to combine the best in breed technology in a single platform. So as a marketer, you don't have to sort through all of the endless tools, tools on LinkedIn, or hoard all these prompts, you can work with market mate. And we don't require prompting, we just have form filled. So let's say you wanted to create a buyer persona. So you would describe your product in plain English. And in a text box, you describe your customer pain points, and then it would write the persona for you. So you don't have to prompt that's the big thing is we're trying to be user friendly for non technical marketing books.
Mike: That makes total sense. Yeah, you did mention something really interesting. There. You talk about translation. So are you generating content in multiple languages?
Nathan: Yeah, so we translate content across 132 different languages. One thing I want to also caution the audience is language translation and localization are two separate things. So while we do translate, we also suggest having someone localise it, who understands the cultural meaning of budget translate up into, but we do do language translation as well.
Mike: Yeah, I totally get that localization Americans and Europeans talking about football, we're talking about two completely different things. You know, it's the easy example. But but one we always get to. So now that that makes a lot of sense. And so I want to dig deeper, because I think one of the real differentiators you've got is the way that you're learning about buyer personas. So tell me a little bit more about what you have to do if you want to create Victor VP of product or any other buyer persona.
Nathan: Yeah, so we have essentially three inputs that come from the marketer. So the first is your product or service describing your product or service in a sentence or two, for example, player zero was a product intelligence platform that helps speak as a product have a single source of truth for all their customer data. So having a short description of the value of your solution and what problem you solve. The second input is really, what are my customer pain points? So what are the challenges that you solve for so if you're a software solution, often what we see is manual processes or lack of integrations, and then maybe it's, Hey, I want to be able to do more with less. So we describe the pain points. And then we have this context window where essentially, the user can copy and paste the job title that they're targeting, they can copy and paste the tech stack information, maybe you only target people that use this ERP system, for example. And then the AI takes that context, and then creates a essentially a psychological profile of your target buyer persona. What's their name, job, title, income, projected income. And then here's some of their pain points, motivations and KPIs. For Victor, the VP of product, for example, you know, one of the KPIs was on time product releases, or am I meeting my revenue targets for the product products that I'm launching. So you can, you can essentially have that. And then one wonderful thing about market mate is you can use it to refine the buyer persona. So let's say you had a customer interview, or you have a win loss survey that you publish, and you click some insights like, hey, you know, Victor, the VP of product is really concerned about x pain point rather than Y pain point. Well, you can modify that persona and say, emphasise X pain point. And now you've refined it. And then it integrates with Google Drive, and Microsoft SharePoint. So you can collaborate with your peers and share your buyer persona across your organisation.
Mike: You also talk about understanding the customer's language and to give the example of a VP of product. I mean, their language is very different if they're a VP and a software company versus a VP of product and say, somebody's making motors or something like that. So how do you really dig down into that customer language and, and train the model on how to speak like the customer?
Nathan: Absolutely, that's, that's a great point. And I think part of it is understanding some of the key words that your audience uses, for example, VPS are much more ROI Focused, you know, tend to be more decision makers. And users like software engineers are more technical. So maybe you need to talk about API's and SDKs. And all that terminology that software engineers use. And then maybe your champion is someone that uses another language that so what we do is capture that in the buyer persona, and also your messaging. So we have market make can create your buyer persona that uses customer language, how they describe their pain point. So it remembers that. And the second part of it is when you create your messaging, so there's essentially three components that market meet helps with one is your brand architecture, how do I need my products? That's a challenge with many organisations and a consistent and systematic way. And then after that product positioning, so how do I position my product for success against the competition? And give some market context? So market mate takes inputs about your market landscape? So what are some of the trends in my market that are relevant to my product? What are some of the alternatives that that customers can choose between? to me like maybe if it's player zero, they're using Excel or some other manual way to collect feedback? And then what makes us better? What are sources of competitive advantage. So the system essentially takes those inputs and creates a positioning statement for your product or service, what differentiates you for which audience and in the market context, and then it takes your buyer persona, and then when it's writing content, it's always considering that customer language, it's considering the market context. And I think that's the big thing that's missing with AI tools out there as they lack the context of your audience of your market of your customer language. And that's essentially what marketing does is it uses your inputs and saves it has memory of, of your customer language.
Mike: So that's really interesting, because you talk about this effectively four step kind of process that you've gone for four different elements, kind of each step is needed to almost to teach the next step what to do. Is that Is that right? Is that how it works?
Nathan: That's right, yeah. So you essentially lay the foundation with your buyer persona. So the first two elements, learn your audience, and then enhance content and enhance messaging, you need those two steps before you're ready to develop content. And you can almost think of an analogy of hiring and onboarding and a B2B marketer is before they can write content, they have to know who they're targeting it to know your audience. And they also have to understand your messaging is how should I speak about the benefits and features of your product or solution? Before you have that foundational knowledge you're not going to be really effective isn't a marketer and we've essentially have an AI mimicking a human being and In how it learns. And another advantage is one constraint we've seen in many, especially growing software companies or technology companies is they have specific subject matter experts with tribal knowledge. And that person can't be everywhere at once they can't review every piece of content, they can't train every new hire. So if you can take an AI model and train it on that market knowledge and insight, imagine the productivity gains you can get for having a new hire, learn from the AI and have it right content. So we're essentially breaking down barriers as well and knowledge gaps across the organisation with AI. And that's why our mission as a company is really to align Sales and Marketing for revenue growth and increase productivity, because that's a barrier we see in many companies is, especially as you're scaling is misalignment between sales and marketing.
Mike: And that's interesting, because I think your co founder, he's more from a sales background removed from marketing. Did you get together and find out that this was a really good idea? And then then Trump promote it? Or did you hate each other before and realise you're doing it wrong?
Nathan: We were in the trenches struggling, like many marketers, where we had a big product launch. And we had to develop top, middle and bottom of funnel content. And we were kind of in this long brainstorming meeting for an hour and a half and back and forth. And we're like, what if we can have ai do this for us like, and both of us were Marvel fans, so we liked kind of like Ironman and how we had a virtual assistant Jarvis. Pretty cool. If we had one for marketing, that, that'd be pretty awesome. So we went on this journey to build it together. And that's how we got started.
Mike: That's awesome. I love that story. I'm gonna think of a bit into where I think people have tried you to use AI and maybe even less successful. And around branding and messaging brand names and messaging seem to be something where you can put prompts into chat VBT, you can get brand names and messages that actually sound quite good. But then when you do it this again, with a similar but slightly different scenario, I think a lot of people have seen the same or very similar messages and brand names come out. So how to avoid this kind of, you know, I guess, trend towards the sort of average brand name and the average message for a particular market, which I think with some of the more generic platforms, you do see?
Nathan: Yeah, great, great question. I think one of the reasons or root causes for the similar outputs as they're not using different frameworks for naming, it's essentially using the same framework, and often guesswork. So what we've done with market makers, we've trained it on some of the most commonly use brand architectures or consistent ways of naming products. One way we trained it is we've trained it on the branded house framework, which is imagine Apple the start every product name with Apple, Apple, iPhone, Apple iPad, essentially reinforcing that master brand value. So we've trained it, hey, this is how you create a master brand, or branded house framework. And then we have another framework that we call branded house. So you can think of the Procter and Gamble as an example where they have Charmin toilet paper, right bounty, paper towel, you have different names for each sub brand. And that has its advantages. One is, you know, if one brand succeeds, the master brand is hey, the parent brand is reinforced, you're strengthening your parent brand. For that house of brands, each brand is separate. So if one brand tanks, the other ones aren't affected, it's a bit of a risk management thing. So we've trained it on multiple brand frameworks. So you essentially select which framework you aren't you enter details about your products, describe your master brand, using boilerplate language. And then it outputs a different naming convention for you based on your selection. So we give people options. And I think it's important as well to train the AI and lead it on to theory or some common naming framework. So it knows how to create a brand architecture versus just guessing. Because I think that's where the where the trouble comes, is in everything sounds the same as when you don't have a framework.
Mike: I love that I love the way that you've built that, that structure, that philosophy of how people name things into the product, because I think that's quite hard to do. Just sat in front of chat GPT and try and explain in a single prompt, or even multiple prompts, how to do that. So that makes a lot of sense. Absolutely. You talk about helping marketers drive strategy. I mean, obviously, we've talked about case study where you've generated content and messaging and things like that and understood a buyer persona. Do you have an example where people have actually built a strategy using market moat?
Nathan: Yeah, yeah. So top of mind, and I should describe kind of the landscape, at least in the market is a lot of companies, technology companies are cutting staff. They're under resourced. They have aggressive goals. And the goals are less focused around just plain revenue and more around profitability. So how do I generate more leads with less staff? You and convert more deals and opportunities in shorten sales cycles. So how we help with strategy is, let's say your strategy is you want to capture a certain vertical that you're going after the new year, we'll help you create the buyer personas will help you create the foundational messaging, and then help you create the campaign content pretty rapidly. So rather than taking months to essentially pivot your strategy, and get your go to market plan together, market mate can help you execute that plan in days rather than in months. And then part of it is as well as let's say your strategy is to pursue that vertical, maybe you need to hire a new sales staff. Or maybe you need to train your existing staff on who are the buyer personas for that market. You know, what, what's my value proposition? What's my elevator pitch? What questions should I ask if I'm on a call or in a customer meeting to uncover needs or pain points. So what we can do is help you enable your sales team with email sequences, sales pitches, the right questions to ask, using AI. So AI is essentially helping you do more with your existing staff and achieve your goals faster. If you're approaching a new market, for example, or you just want to expand and you don't have the budget marketing budget to achieve your goals.
Mike: That makes a lot of sense. You've talked about all sorts of applications and a number of industries. I mean, is this somebody that market makes designed for a particular industry or company size? Or where do you think the sweet spot is?
Nathan: Yeah, I think definitely B2B companies, that's kind of a prerequisite to find the most value of market makers, it's tailored for B2B. The second is companies that either have one marketing manager that's overwhelmed, or a team of marketers, and they're using chat GBT here and there but kind of, in different ways, you know, marketing is using it for to write a blog post sales is using it to read an email, wanting some sense of alignment and control over message consistency, B2B software companies have found a lot of value from this. And just to name some of the markets that we've seen companies find value from market may, FinTech, transportation Software as a Service, these tend to be companies that can really use marketing, manufacturing, because you have a highly technical product. And maybe marketers that are great at marketing, but don't quite understand your buyer personas. So this can essentially accelerate the process of your marketing and improve the effectiveness of it.
Mike: You mentioned, like, you know, fairly small companies with maybe one overstressed marketing manager. Does that mean market may actually is not an expensive product?
Nathan: Yeah, so we are less expensive than 90% of the enterprise software solutions out there, we trying to position ourselves as a disruptive new technology that's accessible. And there really hasn't been a technology like this that has existed that can learn your persona as a content. So we're really aiming to make it as accessible as possible for our audience.
Mike: That sounds great. I'm aware of the time I mean, I think we've we've already overrun. So we have a couple of questions, we always like to ask guests. And the first is what's the best bit of marketing advice you've ever been given?
Nathan: By and large know your audience? That's actually the impetus, why market rate is no, you know, what problems keep them up at night? What are they focused on what motivates them, because to build a brand and to build a marketing campaign, you really have to be a storyteller and put yourself in the audience's shoes and say, hey, I can help you with with what you're trying to do and what your goals are. So that that's my biggest advice is know your audience.
Mike: Sounds like good advice. The other question we ask is, what would you tell a young person who's thinking of marketing as a career? Or are you going to put these people out of job?
Nathan: Oh, yeah, our philosophy on AI is AI isn't going to replace people, but people who know how to use AI will replace people who don't. So definitely would encourage people to get ahead on understanding AI and its implications for marketing. But for a young marketer, the advice that I would give is really get to know yourself is What are my passions? What are my talents, marketing has evolved in amazing ways. And that there's so many sub domains of marketing, there's demand generation, that focus on getting leads is product marketing, where I came from, which is more messaging storytelling, understanding the customer pain points and creating differentiation for the company. And then there's also digital marketing and SEO, that's more analytical and market research. So what I would suggest is start to take a scope of yourself, you know, what are my skills? What are my talents? What am I passionate about? Are you more analytical, maybe marketing operations or market research is better for you? Are you more creative? Do you like design? Maybe a creative department? Can you rule are you more of a storyteller like me, Product Marketing could be a good fit for you. So try a lot of things. Experiment, know yourself and take your time. brilliant
Mike: advice. I mean, I actually still In my career as an engineer, so I'm definitely on the data side, and the guys in our studio will absolutely tell you, I am never going to be a designer. I'm never one of those creative people. So I think that's really good advice. I really appreciate your time. Nathan, I feel like we've only kind of skimmed the surface. Is there anything you feel we've missed, or something else we should have mentioned about market mate? Or one of the features that perhaps we should have covered?
Nathan: Yeah, thanks. Thanks for asking. I think we've covered the main basis. But what I would encourage is, if anyone is curious and wants to continue the conversation, you can always visit our website at www.marketmateai.com. And we'd love to continue the conversation or follow us on LinkedIn.
Mike: In terms of how you do that, can people get a demo? Or how do people learn a bit more about the product? Absolutely.
Nathan: So we can set up a demo for you on our website, we have a demo request form. Or you can connect with us on LinkedIn and message me personally, and I'd be happy to set you up with a demo and consultation to see if market makes a good fit for you. But overall, like we're accessible, we love talking about AI. This is our passion. And we're marketers who created an annual product versus engineers who you know, creating a product. So we come from your point of view, we are the customer, so we would love to continue the conversation.
Mike: I don't think there's a better way to end the podcast than that. So, Nathan, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
Nathan: Thank you so much for having me. Glad to be here and Happy Holidays to all your listeners.
Mike: Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to marketing B2B Tech. We hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you did, please make sure you subscribe on iTunes, or on your favourite podcast application. If you'd like to know more, please visit our website at Napier B2B dot com or contact me directly on LinkedIn.