Barbara Péterfi is an experienced B2B marketer with over 7 years of activity in the industry. In 2018, she returned to Hungary and joined Vodafone, the world’s 4th largest telco company to make use of her skills in project management and digital marketing. As she is dedicated to constantly learning and growing, at the moment she is in charge of B2B content marketing at a global technology provider, Innoveo AG.
Why did you choose a career in marketing, how did you start?
I have 2 university degrees, one in International Relations and one in Journalism and Media Studies. So, even though my academic background does not have a 100% correlation with marketing, my work experience and interests somehow led me to this career path. To give you a few examples, in the Political Science Faculty, I wrote my master thesis about country branding, or when I was selected as a Trainee in the European Parliament, I was working for the Communication Directorate, focusing on event management and social media. If you really think about it, political science or journalism aren’t that far away from marketing.
After all, in all of these specialty areas, it is critical that you are able to tap into the right questions, consider facts and divergent opinions, have the ability to “find the needles in a haystack”, and overall, have a curious and open-minded personality.
Tell us a bit about your professional path until now.
Back in 2013, I left Hungary with 2 university degrees and 2 journalist scholarships under my belt. From there on, my drive for strategic communication and content creation has taken me to a Master’s Degree in Denmark. For 6 years, I settled down in Denmark and called Copenhagen home.
At Eskild Hansen Design Studios, my last employer in Denmark, I was responsible for both internal and external communications, product marketing, as well as managing our in-house co-working space in central Copenhagen. With the brain of a consultancy and the heart of an agency, at Eskild Hansen’s I worked with some of the coolest brands within consumer electronics, the medical industry or sports.
After 6 years in Scandinavia, at the end of 2018 I took the return ticket to Hungary and embraced a new challenge at the world’s 4th largest telco company. By joining Vodafone’s Global Marketing Team with 120+ marketing professionals in Budapest, I became part of an organization that is the #1 provider of IoT services and have a leading role in developing 5G standards and digital workplace solutions worldwide. As a Marketing Account Manager, I’m acting as the main point of contact for assigned clients from New Zealand to Ireland and beyond.
Being hungry for constant learning and innovation, at the moment I’m the frontrunner of B2B content marketing at a global technology provider, Innoveo AG. At Innoveo, we reinvent the way enterprise applications are created, with our no-code platform, Innoveo Skye®.
As Marketing Content Manager, I’m responsible for:
• Develop and execute the company’s global content strategy and lead the way in how we shape our proposition, messaging, and social presence to reach our customers with innovative offerings
• Collaborate with our Sales Department to build strategic narratives for business growth and to increase our brand awareness
• Maintain a strong internal network of customer knowledge, interfacing with Product,
Sales, Partnerships, and Solutions
• Coordinate our internal creative team and external agencies during the production of marketing assets.
What advice do you wish you got when you started your career in marketing?
Don’t take no for an answer!
Top 3 learnings in your marketing career that brought the most value?
1) Content is key. Having a background in journalism, I’m very picky about a good marketing copy and use tools such as Grammarly or Hemingway Editor on a daily basis.
2) There’s always room for more testing and analytics. Being a structured person, I love to use data to create relevant messages and engaging content, to ensure that the audiences’ experience with the brand is meaningful. But above all the metrics and conversion rates, capturing the voice of any brand is about the story behind it.
3) When developing your marketing plan, don’t forget: we are all humans. Even in B2B marketing, at the end of the day, you are trying to convince flesh and blood people, who have opinions, secret motivations, and feelings under the surface.
One result you are really proud of as a marketeer
I am proud to say that besides my full-time job, I managed to dedicate time to build my personal website, https://re-barbara.com/. It is a love project for me where I can combine my passions and write about various topics, from career development to personal branding or even traveling.
What’s one important B2B marketing trend that will gain popularity in 2021, in your opinion?
I really like the rise of webinars, where the audience have the possibility to meaningfully connect with your company and enter into a real-time dialogue.
Which is the strongest social media channel in 2021, and why?
Working for a B2B technology company, our strongest social channel is by far LinkedIn.
What would you recommend to businesses that want to grow in 2021? What about the tactics they should avoid?
People buy services/products from companies they KNOW. Never underestimate the importance of good PR, word of mouth marketing, and the power of a well-managed community.
Can you name one digital marketing tactic that you find overrated?
Our company is yet to see results from our Twitter presence.
