Account based marketing

Why you should make your clients the center of your world

Alisha Lyndon

April 24, 2024

Dr. Charles Doyle, a three-time Chief Marketing Officer, shares why client needs are a critical cornerstone to an effective growth strategy.

In this podcast with Dr. Charles Doyle, we explore why we need to flip the script and bring priorities back to client marketing. When many are veering off course, it’s time to let client-centric strategies take center stage over outdated ABM approaches.

Dr. Charles Doyle

Global Chief Marketing Officer, author, and speaker

Dr. Charles Doyle is a Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, an international business consultant, a strategy advisor, and board-level independent director. He specializes in brand, marketing, and communications strategies and implementation.

With over 40 years of experience working in international companies in the USA, Europe, and Asia, Charles has mainly worked in professional and business-to-business services marketing across multiple sectors and industries. Charles is the former Global Chief Marketing and Communications Officer of Arup, a global engineering consultancy; JLL, a global commercial real estate services company; and Clifford Chance, an international law firm. Charles has also held international marketing, business development, and strategy executive positions for BT, ICL and the UK Atomic Energy Authority.

Currently, Charles holds several board level and advisory positions. He’s also an external advisor to Oxford University, a Board Trustee of a Multi Academy Trust, Freeman of the City of London (Worshipful Company of Marketers) and the founder of Higher Frontiers Limited. A graduate of Glasgow and Oxford Universities, he’s also the author of the Oxford Dictionary of Marketing, which is now in its fourth edition.

Listen here

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I don’t like the term Account-Based Marketing. Why would you reduce something as sophisticated as a major client to the word account? I think the reason for that, in its origins it was seen as a bridge between marketing and sales. And the more you could use salesman’s language, they wouldn’t just see marketing as bag carriers. They would see them as an integral part of the sales process.

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I think with client marketing, you should be edging more towards a total collaboration. Almost sort of a merger of interests, rather than how much can I get from my account.

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I almost think B2B should change its name to H2H – human to human – because businesses don't have personalities. It's thousands of human beings with all different presets and they change constantly.

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Clients have multiple choices, and the internet brings them even more choice. So if you're not doing this more sophisticated, someone else will be. The more you can personalize something, make it really relevant their language, their metrics, their context, break down to the individual… well, that's a differentiator.

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B2B brings in all sorts of exciting things. It's fascinating because no one package works for everyone. So you have to be endlessly curious and ambitious. And it's changing all the time, and you're always on the cutting edge of technology, of society. You're dealing with big issues. I can't think of anything else that gives you such variety.