What Kaustubh Nande teaches about B2B marketing

I do see fundamentally many of these product engineering software companies what they are really doing is they're shaping our experience of the world in the future. Being able to predict what I mean so when you when you make an aircraft or for example a car being able to predict what the final outcome would be in terms of how the product will turn out or what if something sort of breaks how is the end outcome going to happen how many pieces that it breaks into how do I predict a certain challenge that happens later will the CAE software computer aided

engineering right help me predict certain outcomes. So just to give you a big background of the company MSC is a 55 year old company and really originated with the NASA missions right from the start and and the two founders of the original founders of the company developed this code and that's how the journey began. And you know the CAE space is basically you know simulation software that helps you predict product behavior. So innovate adds immense value to the customers and our historical customers new

segments and of course here if you're designing any new product these are the these are the sort type of softwares that you will end up using. And we have a wide across wide variety of applications primarily we play across aerospace automotive manufacturing machinery and so on and so forth. Right from typical the structural physical form of the product to anything you know you know simulating the fluid flow or the let's say air in the room how it's going to be a flow or oil in a pipeline.

How do you use the content route to be able to better effectively reach out to new and existing customers and talk about the work that you're doing and how you can help them solve their problems. I think one of the differences of B2B industry versus a sort of a B2C play is really the speed and the efficacy with which you go through the journey and consume the product right. If I was buying a chocolate or FMCG product that my buyers journey is really really small.

You know B2B space it's really a long-term lock-in it's a lot of strategic critical decisions are involved in the process etc. So I think that play is very different point number one and to address that play. My view is that the buyers journey particularly in the B2B space has shifted over the last every 20 years and if you combine the two the future the next 10-15 years I really see the buyer journey evolving into what I term education engagement and experience.

Right. So I think in the B2B space there's a lot more educational involved and there is a combination of awareness and a little more beyond that. So I think the whole understanding of the space is critical point number one. Second the ability to scale and develop content out of your for your specific audience becomes equally important. And then the third part is about the distribution and many times I think the combination of these three is the distinguishing factor between I would say good marketing and great marketing.

The average decision maker in companies reads about 10 odd content pieces before finally sort of making a decision in technology right. Correct. So how do you really reach out to them the decision maker. Today as a marketeer I get ample feedback on my product. So that's a great place to start and I believe the challenge now for marketeers is not feedback or information it's the meaning and actionable information of how does this translate into a better product or a better messaging or a better marketing strategy.

So that's point number one. The second is you know the term called account based marketing particularly in the B2B space has been thrown around quite a bit. It is a it's fundamentally again a conversational deepening of relationship with your existing customers you know and up to upsell and cross sell. So that is a lot of play and I think again content is really becoming the key. So that is another great opportunity for marketeers. The third part really I believe is the marriage between narrative slash to storytelling and the distribution of social.

Great content on a not so good distribution platform is not necessarily going to help you and vice versa some great content but not leveraging it properly is also a challenge. So what as a B2B brand marketeer what are the one or two things that you can you feel you can pick up from consumer brands and how they market. So is there sort of some learnings there that you can also sort of bring back into the B2B space. Sure. One of them is the addition and increase of emotional content in messaging.

I think the B2C brands which I already mentioned are doing exceptionally well and maybe B2B brands have to learn from it by number one. The second particular aspect is also a bit more focus on narratives and storytelling that I think the advertising fraternity in B2C does exceptionally well with good focused market research. And translating that into a B2B context is fairly challenging but it's not impossible. That's what I feel. And the third part is really execution at scale. Many times in the B2B context you're working with a limited set.

Very defined audience. Very defined audience. Very defined audience. And maybe it also limits the way you think about marketing. Maybe that's a perception change as well especially when content is accessible across platforms. Right. So tell us a bit about Kostav Nande outside of the workplace. What do you do on the weekends? What are your hobbies? Well I try to spend time with my family on the weekends for sure. You know in terms of hobbies I like to play cricket many times.

Well you're working in sports. So a little bit of sports. And then more about the passion is I do see fundamentally many of these product engineering software companies. What I'm really doing is shaping our experience of the world in the future. And the ability to impact that future in a very small positive way is I think what really drives me. So that's an excellent way to really keep myself motivated and you know contribute not just to a particular company or a particular product but a larger ecosystem in which we sort of work and thrive.

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