Are personas too popular? In this edition of The Kula Ring, Jeff and Carman examine the evolution of buyer personas and their usefulness to B2B manufacturers. How helpful are they anyway? How could they be better? What other approaches might manufacturing marketers use instead? All this and more in Episode 197. We think you’re going to love it.

Sustainability is a corporate-led initiative, but marketers are often the ones refining the messaging to resonate with customers. In this episode of The Kula Ring, Jeff and Carman discuss the common pitfalls of sustainability messaging that will either get it lost in the competitive shuffle or be ignored by the sales team. We also explore how to overcome those challenges so that internal and external stakeholders understand how your sustainability initiatives impact them.

Solving your customers’ problems and creating a product they’ll want to purchase is at the forefront of all research and development departments. In today’s episode, Chris Witt, Vice President and General Manager of Portfolio Solutions at Tektronix, sits down with us to review his funnel approach to innovation and how it drives the process of developing the right products for his market. He explores how they understand their customers’ problems to approach the launch of their refined disruptive products.

Digging into data and exploring technology to undercover insights in your organization is vital to operations efficiency. Ryan Knox, Co-founder of Bridge Digital explores the use of digital tools to create efficiency in all areas of an organization from IT, Marketing, Sales, and more. He discusses the benefits of extracting data vs. using specific tools to help organizations get results that helps them do their job better and the importance of creating excitement for internal change when implementing new technologies.

Paying attention to how your product is sold online is only the starting point to creating a positive customer experience for E-commerce shoppers. Jacki Lutz, Head of Communications, Training and E-commerce, Aftermarket, at Sensata Technologies, explores the marketing strategy her team uses to develop messaging that resonates with customers across all E-commerce platforms. She reveals why helping customers sell Sensata products and upholding Sensata’s reputation for customer experience is important to her team.