Long before mindfulness was a thing, Melanie was everybody's "best friend." When she's with you, she makes you feel like you are the only person in the world: She fully celebrates your best moments; she feels your sadness.

She is your person.

But it isn't just with other people that Melanie is able to be fully present in the moment. She also feels the calmness and peace of being in nature. And in yoga class, when everyone else is falling over while trying to hold a tree pose, her mind is free from distractions, her body still as a lake on a perfect summer day.

Like everyone, Melanie does have her moments. She's a morning person, so her anger burns as bright as her red hair when her fiancé, Noah, won't get out of bed until noon on a weekend. Her mom has nagged her about the way she dresses since she was a teenager. And her lifelong inability to swim well is at odds with her deep desire to complete her first triathlon.

Over the years, Melanie has learned how to manage her stress and fiery emotions well. Not perfect, but better.

Though her work as a B2B marketer hasn't made it easy.

Melanie at Work: A Different Story

It's hard to characterize the plight of a B2B marketer at work as a mindful one. Melanie is no exception. Agile sprints. Ever-increasing pipeline targets. Endless requests from sales.

The situation is causing increasing levels of angst for Melanie.

She loves her career. Or at least she thought she did. But she goes home at night feeling worn out. Unfulfilled.

She got into marketing because she saw it as an extension of her deep desire to connect with people. To listen to them. To help solve their problems. Instead, she feels like she's cranking out mass-produced widgets and grinding them out through their marketing automation "sausage maker."

Worse, she has no sense of whether anyone is even enjoying her widgets or whether they are having a positive impact on the business's performance.

Melanie had reached an inflection point: Find a more fulfilling career, or take the road less traveled as a marketer.

Bringing Mindfulness to Her Marketing

Never a quitter, Melanie decided to bring her true self to her marketing. If this career wasn't for her, she would at least try it her way first!

She built a plan to bring mindfulness to her marketing.

She shared it with Noah first. As a civil engineer, he was a systems thinker who knew the importance of a plan. More important, he always gave her honest feedback. Noah liked the plan. He knew that Melanie needed to move forward with this initiative.

She then sought buy-in from her peers. It deeply resonated with them. They too felt like sausage makers.

The last hurdle was getting buy-in from Lisa, her CMO. Lisa was a tough manager, but a supportive one. Whip-smart with more than two decades of senior executive experience, Lisa had adapted her skills throughout the years to keep pace with the tremendous evolution in B2B marketing.

Lisa bought in. Somewhat. She agreed to fund a pilot. As a savvy executive she knew it was too risky to completely pivot to Melanie's approach, but she was intrigued enough to give her the green light to focus on it for two quarters.

Getting Started: To Know Is to Serve

One of the greatest areas of dissatisfaction Melanie had with her career was that she felt she didn't really know the people she was serving—her "target personas."

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Your B2B Marketing Career: The Parable of Melanie the Mindful Marketer

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image of Mark Emond

Mark Emond is founder and president of Demand Spring, a B2B revenue marketing consultancy that works with brands such as Fidelity, BNY Mellon, Seismic, Rapid7, and Dun & Bradstreet to transform their demand creation practices.

LinkedIn: Mark Emond