💡 Thomas McCarthy-Howe, Chief Technology Officer at STROLID, Inc., delves into the transformative power of AI in business communication. He explores how AI-driven conversations, referred to as "liquid gold," can revolutionize customer interaction by mining insights from thousands of daily exchanges. He also shares his experiences and insights into the creation and application of the vCon Standard, a unique framework for capturing and utilizing these rich data sources.💡

"Once you start truly listening to your customers' conversations, you realize they reveal things about your business that you didn’t know." - Thomas McCarthy-Howe

Thomas explores the challenges businesses encounter in using conversational data, from defining conversations to deriving insights. He highlights how AI can scale customer understanding and strategic thinking, while also stressing ethical needs like privacy frameworks. Through his extensive experience, Thomas shows how data transparency and sentiment analysis enable businesses to create hyper-personalized customer interactions. 

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💡 Mike Vannoy, CMO at Asure Software, talks about the contentious topic of B2B cold calling, weaving through concepts of customer experience, content strategy, and the integration of marketing efforts with sales to foster long-term business growth. Mike also sets the stage for an in-depth exploration of how traditional and modern sales tactics coexist and complement each other.💡

“I don't like the binary nature of never making a cold call because it assumes there's something magical on the other side of that coin that works. However, the other side of that coin is a massive continuum of countless possibilities, some of which work better than others.”- Mike Vannoy

Mike Vannoy challenges the conventional wisdom surrounding cold calls, suggesting a nuanced approach that defies its binary categorization. He underscores the importance of a comprehensive content strategy, advocating for its role as a pivotal element in the B2B sales process. The conversation delves into the ever-evolving buyer's journey and the critical need for sales and marketing alignment. Mike's insights are geared towards creating a powerful customer experience, bridging the gap between the company's brand aspirations and the customer's real-world interactions.

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💡 Peter Lloyd, a globally experienced CMO and marketing expert, explores the critical role of customer-centric strategies in global marketing and sales. He shares his vast experience from his tenure at Digicel, highlighting the importance of elevating the customer’s role to the highest authority in any business decision process. He also discusses building a customer-obsessed culture within organizations and how this approach influences success both in the B2C and B2B sectors.💡

"Ultimately, the customer has the final say. The numbers are critical, but if the customer is saying something contrary to what you're saying, that will eventually show in the numbers." - Peter Lloyd

Peter discusses Digicel's transformation, highlighting the importance of understanding customer pain points to fuel innovation and growth. With declining traditional revenues and rising competition, he stresses collaboration between sales and marketing. He emphasizes using customer data to refine ideal customer profiles, aligning strategies and KPIs, and positioning customer experience as a critical competitive advantage in dynamic markets.

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Jamie Gier, a three-time B2B CMO, discusses the challenges faced by B2B CMOs and why they often fail quickly. She emphasizes the difficulty of creating a brand and generating high-quality content in a B2B environment with elongated sales cycles and multiple decision-makers. 

"Today's brand is tomorrow's demand, and CMOs must balance immediate results with a strategic focus on brand building and content creation. Content plays a key role in building trust and influencing purchasing decisions." - Jamie Gier

Jamie also explains the need for a content strategy to remove friction points in the sales process and provide valuable educational content. Jamie stresses the significance of customer voices in content creation and the role of relationships in building trust. She concludes by emphasizing the importance of setting expectations, getting early wins, and building a long-term marketing engine.

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Brandon Rhoten, the current CMO of GroundTruth, leverages his rich B2C experience acquired during his time at Wendy's and as the CMO at Papa Johns and Potbelly Sandwiches. In this exclusive interview, discover his unique method of merging B2C and B2B marketing that includes but goes much deeper than grabbing more attention and connecting with the emotional needs of B2B buyers. Explore Brandon's unique fusion of B2C and B2B tactics to fuel innovation at GroundTruth.

After listening for years to the likes of Forbes, Gartner, and Oracle about making B2B more like B2C, it is more than just an interesting notion.

"You're advertising to people in B2B, and they have the same attention issues and fundamental desires as in B2C." - Brandon Rhoten

According to Brandon, the key to grabbing attention in B2B marketing is finding the "hook" - the one thing that solves the problem and gets the target audience interested. It's all about addressing their fundamental needs quickly. This is the opposite of leading with function and features. 

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In this interview, Jon Ewing, a three-time B2B CMO, discusses the role of marketing attribution in B2B marketing. While acknowledging the importance of data-driven marketing, he cautions against overreliance on attribution models, particularly in the complex B2B sales process. Ewing emphasizes the need for experimentation and proxy measures to gauge the effectiveness of marketing efforts, especially in areas that are difficult to measure, such as events. 

Jon discusses the concept of the McNamara fallacy, which highlights the dangers of focusing exclusively on measurable data and ignoring the unmeasurable aspects of marketing. He warns against prioritizing metrics that can be easily measured, leading to a narrow view of marketing effectiveness.

"We can be over-reliant on [attribution] in a B2B context. B2B sales is a much more complicated process with a lot more layers and a lot more people involved, and therefore, trying to pin success or trying to model backwards to understand which of our marketing materials have been the most influential can be very, very difficult." - Jon Ewing

Jon recommends and suggests examples for finding the right balance between data and intuition, experimentation and attribution, brand-building, and thought leadership. 

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CMO Fran Wilson has a wealth of experience in B2B software and was involved in the growth of Red Hat from its early stages to its acquisition by IBM for over $4 billion. Fran highlights the importance of focusing on a limited number of growth bets when developing a go-to-market strategy. She advises against spreading resources too thin by simultaneously chasing too many growth opportunities. Fran suggests focusing on three to five growth priorities that align with the organization's goals and capabilities. This approach ensures alignment across the organization and enables effective resource allocation.

"If you try to chase 10 or 8 growth bets, you're going to peanut butter everything, and you're not going to be able to execute in big, meaningful, impactful ways. You really need to enumerate no more than five... growth bets that you're going to execute in your fiscal planning." - Fran Wilson

Fran's insights provide valuable guidance for B2B CMOs looking to deliver successful go-to-market strategies. Her five best practices offer a framework for alignment, efficiency, and growth. 

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Vincent Guérin, VP and Head of Marketing at Trolley, joins Steve MacDonald on the B2B Marketing Perspectives podcast to discuss the importance of content and thought leadership in B2B marketing. 

Vincent highlights the challenge of creating content for industries where marketers are not the persona or ideal customer profile (ICP). It's important to create content that addresses the pain points and challenges of the target audience, even if you don't personally experience them.

Vincent stresses the need to build trust with potential clients through thought leadership content that showcases expertise and positions the company as a trusted advisor. He suggests a content strategy that focuses 85% on the audience's pain points, challenges, and industry trends and only 15% on self-promotion. 

"If you create highly promotional content that only speaks about your product, you really talk to maybe 20% of the market. You need to find ways to educate your market and educate and entertain them to attract a much broader audience." - Vincent Guérin

Vincent tackles the tough problem of building expertise through content and thought leadership in this interview.

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Introducing Elizabeth Irvine, VP of Marketing and Customer Success at MarketMuse. Elizabeth has a wealth of experience in the marketing industry, having worked at Gartner and led BDR teams. In this interview, we will delve into the importance of content planning and uncover the untapped resources that CMOs can leverage to create thought-provoking and engaging content.

Elizabeth highlights the need for marketers to think beyond traditional content planning processes. By prioritizing customer conversations and leveraging customer data, marketers can create content that truly resonates with their audience. This approach not only enhances the effectiveness of content marketing but also strengthens customer relationships and establishes the company as a trusted advisor.

"The day is full of conversations, and your brain can only process that for a certain amount of time, and when someone's asking you what customers and prospects in these meetings are saying or want, it's hard to recall, let alone how to capture and use it as insights for marketing." - Elizabeth Irvine

Elizabeth shares her secrets to tapping into untapped resources for content planning.

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Steffen Hedebrandt, founder and CMO of Dream Data, discusses the importance of revenue attribution in B2B marketing. He emphasizes the need for marketers to think long-term and connect their activities to revenue outcomes. Steffen shares insights from a benchmark study of 400 customer journeys. 

Steffen discusses the average length of a B2B customer journey (192 days), the number of touches required (31 sessions), and the implications to B2B marketers for driving revenue. 

"You need to constantly be curious about how your company wins revenue. So, every time you win a deal, start thinking about what actually led to this deal and what your customer journeys look like. Second, if you want to stand out in this day and age, you need to be relentless when it comes to producing high-quality content and thought leadership." - Steffen Hedebrandt

He also emphasizes the role of high-quality content in driving B2B growth and explains how content can serve as an investment in the sales team. Steffen concludes by discussing the challenges faced by B2B marketers in proving the value of their activities and the importance of experimentation. 

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In this interview, Anil Rege, CMO of Plastic Financial Rewards, discusses the importance of hyper-personalization in B2B marketing. Drawing from his experience in the CPG industry, Anil explains how B2B marketers can learn from B2C strategies to understand better how to engage their customers. He emphasizes the need to consider B2B prospects as consumers and create personalized content that addresses their needs and pain points. Anil also highlights the role of data in personalization and the importance of building credibility through thought leadership content.

In the B2B world, every sale represents a larger portion of a company's revenue and carries a higher risk for the buyer. That's why personalizing your messaging and delivering valuable content is essential to building trust and winning over B2B customers. 

"Content creation takes time, but it's a high risk, high reward strategy in B2B marketing." - Anil Rege

Anil covers the importance of understanding B2B customers as consumers, the role of content in building credibility, and the power of data in personalization.

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He emphasizes the need for companies to shift towards efficiency and lower costs, which requires reevaluating and experimenting with marketing strategies. Aaron provides examples of how he applied forced learning to cut funding for certain marketing activities and the key learning that had never happened before. By going back to first principles and understanding the target audience's needs, Aaron was able to achieve a 40% increase in marketing efficiency.

"By getting a quantifiable and reality-based view of marketing contribution, my CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) has decreased dramatically. I can now grow at not just 15% or so more efficiently but at a 40% more efficient order of magnitude." - Aaron Ballew

See how Aaron prioritizes efficiency and profitability in his willingness to question the status quo and experiment with new strategies.

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In this interview, Neil Morrison, Global Head of Measurement at Signal AI, discusses key advancements in AI as discriminative AI, which allows for the identification of specific concepts within unstructured data. Morrison explains that discriminative AI enables companies to track their brand mentions, identify relevant topics, and measure their performance against competitors. Companies can gain insights into their brand expertise and trust score by analyzing media coverage. Morrison emphasizes the importance of understanding the full scope of AI capabilities and distinguishing between discriminative AI and generative AI.

Neil also talks about the importance of tracking brand reputation and thought leadership content in today's media landscape. He explains how discriminative AI can identify key topics and sentiments to help companies establish trust and expertise. Businesses can effectively forecast and target their thought leadership content by analyzing data, leading to better decision-making and financial impact.

"If you think about trust, it is a key element of reputation, and reputation has a financial element to it. One of our consulting clients has put a financial figure on how much trust impacts their business—and it goes into the billions." - Neil Morrison

Neil eloquently demonstrates the power of thought leadership in shaping brand reputation and how trust cannot be underestimated. He explains why companies must track their brand mentions, measure their trust score, and strategically target thought leadership topics to stay ahead of the competition.

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💡 Andy Weiss, Chief Marketing Officer at Ceipal, explores how adaptive frameworks can effectively guide companies through periods of rapid change. He shares his unique career journey and discusses the significance of understanding the fundamentals of business to sustain success in ever-evolving markets.💡

"If you understand what and how your peers operate, boil those down into fundamentals, and then turn them into either the frameworks they're using or the frameworks you're using, your marketing is going to improve." - Andy Weiss

Through the use of SEO-optimized strategies, Andy shares insights on staying ahead of market trends by building robust frameworks grounded in key fundamentals, enabling companies to stay agile in their marketing plans. By emphasizing core essentials like understanding ideal customer profiles (ICPs), leveraging brand marketing, and fostering strong interdepartmental relationships, he guides marketers on how to lead their teams effectively through both growth and challenging times.

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Monica Cooper, CMO of the Robinson College of Business, discusses the challenges facing higher education in today's market. The insights shared by Monica Cooper shed light on the changing landscape of higher education marketing. As colleges and universities face declining enrollment challenges and skepticism about a degree's value, they must adapt their marketing strategies to remain competitive.

The integration of B2B marketing principles, collaboration with employers, and alumni involvement in the curriculum are crucial elements in positioning higher education institutions as valuable partners to students and businesses. Institutions can attract the right students and forge meaningful partnerships with employers by focusing on the outcomes and benefits they provide.

"Each individual school has to make the case for why someone wants to get a degree from them." - Monica Cooper

Learn more about how Monica emphasizes the importance of content in higher education marketing. Content is king, and storytelling is key to convincing people of the value and outcomes of education.

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Meet Vinay Nair, a former CMO with experience at companies like IBM and Microsoft, who shares his insights on being a successful CMO and building strong relationships with the C-suite. Vinay has a phenomenal background as an analyst, consulting, the planning side, owning the P&L, and doubling SaaS companies from 25 to 50 million in ARR.

He emphasizes the importance of understanding P&L and revenue planning and the need for marketers to be business leaders, not just marketing leaders. Vinay also highlights the value of content in driving growth and success for companies, stressing that it is an investment in intellectual property and a crucial part of the marketing strategy. 

"Making that pivot and that shift to being a business leader and really thinking about how you inject marketing to go drive the entire business versus just lead gen is going to be the key to success as a CMO." - Vinay Nair

Vinay highlights the evolving role of the CMO and the importance of aligning marketing strategies with overall business objectives. By understanding the P&L of the business and actively participating in the revenue planning process, CMOs can ensure that marketing budgets are optimized and aligned with growth goals.

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Introducing Morgan DiGiorgio, the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at DirectMail 2.0. Morgan is directly responsible for capitalizing on the potential of aligning the sales & marketing functions. Her results? An impressive 152% growth over three years. Despite a challenging market environment for her Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs), her strategies have helped lead the company to secure a spot on the Inc. 5000 list for the past three consecutive years. Learn from her successes during this in-depth interview.

“My sales team heavily relies upon us to put out that content marketing so that they can take advantage of it on their sales lines. So, without it, they would be screaming at me. Hey, where's our marketing? Where are our leads? What are you guys doing over there?” - Morgan DiGiorgio

Click through to learn more about Morgan's POV on serving her industry, providing valuable content, and integrating it into the sales process.

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"The best founders we see are obsessed with those customers. They're obsessed with the customer problem. It's really about what are the problems they face and really diving in deep to understand, and then building content around that to try to draw them in." - Anne Gherini

Anne recommends that founders resist the temptation to spend their way out of marketing challenges by hiring expensive consultants or agencies without a solid foundation, which can be a major waste of resources. Instead, she recommends focusing on building the right marketing team and understanding your market.

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Meet Bill Glenn, a veteran in the world of marketing and CMO at Blueboard, an experiential recognition reward company. With over 25 years of experience in B2B marketing, Bill has held multiple CMO positions at Series B and Series C companies.

Bill contends that marketing should provide value in the company's reputation and offerings, as well as an investment in individual salespeople. By helping salespeople establish trust, credibility, and industry expertise, marketing sets them up for success in building long-term relationships with customers. Bill has ideas for creating salespeople’s industry expertise that fall outside of conventional norms, establishing a relationship of reciprocity between marketing and sales.

"One of the most important elements of value that marketing provides is how to bolster the credibility of salespeople such that trust isn't just about a transactional moment in time.” - Bill Glenn

Building a dream relationship between marketing and sales requires a deep understanding of the sales perspective and motivations, and simply listening to sales call recordings doesn't get to the true heart of what sales needs. That understanding won’t come until you do one-to-one interviews with them, just like you would do with a customer, and have a preset list of questions like, How can I make your job easier? Where are you getting stuck? Where are we falling down versus our competition? When you start to aggregate the interviews, common challenges can be addressed, usually with just a few additional trainings or pieces of content to help the sales team do their job better. Bill’s POV is that it’s rarely possible to understand all that by simply listening to sales calls.

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Ryan George, the Chief Marketing Officer of DocuPace Technologies, boasts more than two decades of experience in the realm of marketing communications. His expertise lies in cultivating an all-encompassing and unified marketing strategy. He achieves this by initially deriving value from and integrating insights across all company departments into his blueprint for success. 

"Don't be fooled into thinking that your job description or your specific role is where you add the most value to the organization. CMOs should be the glue that connects different departments and helps them understand their role in the company's success." - Ryan George

Ryan underscores the significance of harmonizing external and internal priorities, fostering interdepartmental connections, and assuming the role of cohesive force within the organization. He supports his insights with tangible instances of successfully implementing these approaches.

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In this episode, Cristy talks about the rising importance of influencer and partner marketing. She discusses how mature partnership programs drive up to 28% of revenue (23% on average), as found in a joint study between Impact.com and Forrester.  This is the main reason why this channel is becoming increasingly critical for B2B marketers and one that you only pay for when revenue is realized. Cristy shares examples of successful B2B influencer and partner marketing campaigns, including HubSpot and Zenefits. She emphasizes the importance of content in educating and engaging B2B buyers and reaching them at all stages of the buyer's journey.

"Partnerships can be both focused on brand and demand. But what's great about partnerships and influencer marketing is that you're only paying for the desired revenue outcome." - Cristy Garcia

Cristy provides a different perspective on assessing acquisition costs as categorized primarily into brand and demand, with partnerships and influencer marketing falling into both categories. What separates partnerships and influencer marketing is that payment is based solely on achieving the desired outcomes. This contrasts with the uncertainty of allocating a large budget to ads without guaranteed performance. Instead, funds can be channeled towards commissions for partners who generate sales or website traffic, facilitate lead generation, or provide exposure through panels and conferences. These partnership models are gaining in popularity due to their direct ROI.

Topics Covered:

• Referral-based vs. transactional partnerships
• How HubSpot got a 50% lift from partnerships
• Befriend your CFO with low-risk revenue generation
• Growing lead volume through partnerships
• The role of partnerships through the entire sales funnel
• Content to educate the 97% TAM not currently in-market
• Why you need more B2C in your B2B
• Why you must have a third channel: traditional sales and marketing alone is not enough

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Ken emphasizes the importance of setting expectations, negotiating resources with the CEO, and benchmarking budget allocations. He also highlights the value of thought leadership and credible content in reaching the 97% of potential customers who are not actively searching for a solution.

"All of us are going after the 3%, and you're only going to get your share. The place where you're going to get more than your fair share is up in the funnel a little further, and that's the domain of thought leadership." - Ken Lempit

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Introducing Tim Hines, the CMO of AmTrav. Tim is a marketing expert, global keynote speaker, and author of the book "The Marketing Starter: How an Entrepreneurial Spirit Will Make You a More Savvy Marketer." In this episode, we discuss the importance of thought leadership and why CMOs should stop trying to create it and simply start implementing it today!

Tim recommends that one of the core pillars of a brand’s thought leadership strategy is radical honesty, building tremendous authority and authenticity at the same time.

“We try to say, hey, this is what's going on in the industry. We're not going to sugarcoat it. This sucks, or this is great, or this could be better. And here's a piece of content that we think from our radically honest approach is our take on that.” - Tim Hines

According to Tim, thought leadership is about positioning your brand as an expert that is worthy of being noticed and listened to, providing valuable insights and information to your audience that educates them. It is the best way to build trust and credibility with potential customers that not only differentiates you from the competition but provides reasons to believe in your salespeople and the quality of the products you sell.

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"Because the CMO is responsible for helping pipeline development, they will win the hearts and minds of CEOs and CFOs if they partner with them to make the sales forecast more robust and accurate using all the available interactions and touch points. At least bring together something more holistically data-driven than the traditional sales forecast to help prepare for managing expectations, earnings, and setting targets. I'm saying that two forecasts or three forecasts representing slightly alternate views are better than one that's not trusted and based on all of your data inputs." - Heidi Lanford

The world of marketing and sales is evolving, and CMOs need to embrace data-driven strategies to stay ahead. Data is a goldmine. It can help customize content, create personalized experiences, and drive product development. Through data-driven insights, CMOs can further establish themselves as thought leaders within their own companies.

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💡 Baris Vural, CRO at Smartlinx, emphasizes the vital role of a well-defined Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) in accelerating go-to-market success. He explores how understanding evolving customer needs, fostering human-centered communication, and building communities enable businesses to connect deeply with C-suite executives, address their challenges, and create targeted, impactful marketing strategies. 💡

"As a CRO, it’s all about efficiency, customer acquisition costs, and ensuring your company focuses on the right targets. If you’re engaging with the wrong ICP, you’ll drag your entire company along with you." - Baris Vural

Baris Vural highlights the importance of defining the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) by understanding customers' shared challenges. Through community engagement, businesses can foster relationships and build brand familiarity beyond immediate sales. Continuous outreach like podcasting strengthens these connections, enabling refined ICPs, reduced acquisition costs, and better conversion rates. By listening and adapting, companies can shape strategies that align with the evolving B2B landscape.

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In this interview with Lisa Hayashi, the CMO of Safeguard Cyber, she brings a unique perspective to the table, having started her career in angel investments and business development for startups. She has witnessed the growth and exits of various companies, and she shares her insights on how CMOs can drive internal collaboration and revenue growth.

"We serve sales. When you serve a team, it means you help them be successful all the time. So we walk in the shoes of our salespeople and bring them along the journey by constantly displaying empathy and using data to back up everything we do." - Lisa Hayashi

Lisa always approaches internal conversations, starting with her CEO, with supporting data, because it's then very difficult not to get a head nod of support. Building trust and a united front as a single growth team across marketing and sales takes a little extra effort.

Lisa's approach to data-driven decision-making extends to the collaboration between marketing and sales. The growth team can ensure accountability and success by setting service level agreements (SLAs) and tracking metrics, working to accomplish them, refining, and moving forward as a single team.

Learn all of Lisa’s insights now.

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Allie joins Steve MacDonald on the B2B Marketing Perspectives podcast to discuss the significance of thought leadership, its direct correlation with products and their perceived value, methods to infuse absolute authenticity into thought leadership communication, and the influence of data-driven insights on performance enhancement. Allie boasts extensive expertise in B2B SaaS marketing and a significant foundation in revenue operations (RevOps).

"Thought leadership is all about being the show, not the commercial that advertises on the show." - Allie Collins

Allie provides concrete illustrations of how she uniquely leverages thought leadership to establish her brand as an authority and to actively create and add value to her company’s products.

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“I tell my marketing teams to think of themselves as air traffic controllers. So the job of an air traffic controller is at any given time to know where the planes are at the airport, who's on the runway, who's on the ramps, who's getting ready to be pushed back from the gate, who needs to tow into the gate, who's been stuck for four hours, right? Air traffic control is responsible for knowing where every plane is at every moment. For the marketer, the equivalent of the plane is the lead. Know where they are at all times.” - Adam Figueira

Adam believes that understanding what motivates each team member and creating the conditions for them to thrive is crucial for the team and company’s success. Adam emphasizes the importance of psychological safety, creativity, and embracing failure in order to unleash productivity, incredible content, and accountability. He discusses the significance of holding marketing accountable for sales-qualified opportunities (SQOs) and working more closely with sales than is the industry norm. 

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Introducing Daniel Christian, the Senior Vice President of Marketing at Tradesmen International. Daniel is a proficient bridge builder between marketing strategy and profitability. His distinctive perspective stems from his leadership experience in marketing, running customer support, and the incorporation of insights from all internal departments. This collection of experiences forms his unique approach, termed "internal thought leadership.” By bringing together external perspectives with internal teams and anchoring them to the company's vision and mission, marketers can become thought leaders, propelling growth. Daniel aligns the company's internal focus with customer needs through the concept of a common unit of measure, effectively closing the gap between customer desires and corporate profitability.

"Because of the absolute focus on the customer and extensive internal touchpoints across departments, marketing has a unique opportunity to establish internal thought leadership by aligning the external and internal strategies of the company into a roadmap that the team can take to stay one step ahead of the competition.” - Daniel Christian

Topics covered:

• Establishing internal thought leadership
• Visualizing the story for internal teams
• Customer KPIs in a new light
• Filling the marketing gap
• When done right, content is more than vital
• The one measure that moves the P&L

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Monique de Maio is the founder and CMO of OnDemandCMO, a marketing agency specializing in B2B companies in the tech, professional, and financial services industries. With over 25 years of experience, Monique has helped numerous clients navigate the complex world of B2B marketing and leverage content to drive success.

​In this interview, Monique discusses the importance of understanding the non-linear nature of the buyer's journey in B2B marketing. She emphasizes the need for B2B companies to create content that meets the needs of buyers at every stage of their journey rather than relying on a linear funnel approach. Monique also highlights the importance of consistent messaging, providing value in advance, and making content about the customer rather than the company.

“Your buyer's journey is not linear anymore. So you can't predict how and where, and what assets they're going to be consuming in what order.” - Monique de Maio

Monique gives practical examples and recommendations for marketing in the world of non-linear buyer journeys.

For a link to Monique's visual of today's buyer's journey, CLICK HERE.

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Introducing Melissa Sargeant, a four-time CMO with 25+ years of experience in tech marketing. Melissa understands that content is the key to the company's success, rating it a 25 on a scale of 1-10. Across all marketing channels, Melissa leverages data to measure content attribution, revealing true pipeline velocity drivers. This data is shared weekly with her team, the C-suite, and sales, fostering trust, respect, and collaborative relationships across teams and the organization. Skillfully using content and marketing attribution data is key to her success, which is why she isn’t a CMO failing quickly—but thriving.

How do you measure the impact of marketing on pipeline and revenue? Melissa Sargeant shares her insights.

"As part of the total data set, we look at the win rate differentials between deals that close that have five or more marketing touches from an attribution perspective. They close at twice the rate of those that have less than that." - Melissa Sargeant

Click to gain insights from Melissa's expertise, spanning her best marketing strategies and how she leverages data for revenue generation—fostering internal team consensus, promoting collaboration, and executing successful go-to-market initiatives.

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Meet Denys Dubner, the visionary CEO at the helm of two prominent international companies. Boasting a rich marketing background, Denys has consistently delivered impressive growth in his previous roles as a CMO. His distinct approach to what he expects from his CMOs sets Denys apart.

In this interview, Denys strongly emphasizes generating customer value, particularly at the top of the funnel, targeting the 97% of potential customers who are not yet familiar with your brand. For Denys, it's crucial that CMOs prioritize brand awareness, trust, and likability in advance of direct contact. Being a faceless company approaching customers in the cold is a recipe for disaster.

To Denys, building trust and loyalty is a non-negotiable aspect of the job. He urges his CMOs to go the extra mile in making their brand indispensable and invaluable to customers. The key lies in establishing and nurturing strong relationships that withstand the test of time.

Key Quote: "One of our largest customers said that if one of your competitors calls us, we give them two names, your company and the largest company in the world in aesthetic medicine that patented every single thing that you know of. So they just say to the competitors, if you're one of those two, we'll talk to you. If you're not one of those two, I'm sorry. And that's the beauty of being valuable, and you can be valuable only if you know the customer." - Denys Dubner

Denys doesn’t like to be in a position where he needs to reach out to someone who doesn't know, trust, or like them. Click through to learn how he has ensured being first valuable and then highly successful as both a CEO and CMO. - Link TBD 

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In this podcast, join Marc McNamara, Founder and CEO of The Enablement Group, and Brian Cleary, a former CMO and Chief Strategy Officer, as they delve into the crucial topic of sales enablement and the significant role of content in this process. The discussion centers around the vital importance of providing salespeople with well-curated and organized content that is readily available to them.

Throughout the conversation, they shed light on the challenges that arise in content management and stress the significance of measuring content utilization, attribution, and engagement and how these indicators help sellers easily serve and engage with potential buyers. Notably, they underscore the value of thought leadership content, which is pivotal in establishing trust and credibility with buyers while positioning sellers as experts in their domain.

A key theme that emerges is the necessity for seamless collaboration between the marketing and sales teams to effectively leverage content, ultimately driving sales success. By synergizing efforts and aligning strategies, both departments can empower salespeople with the tools they need to succeed, enhancing overall business performance.

“Content is the lifeblood of modern organizations. It needs to be curated, organized, and served up to sales reps in a way that guides them to success. The key is to provide relevant content that is ready to be used in the context of the buyer's journey.” - Marc McNamara

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In this interview with host Steve MacDonald, meet Monique de Maio, the founder and CMO of ondemandCMO, a 25-year-old marketing company that serves some of the biggest names in B2B marketing, such as IBM, Intel, Cox Communications, and Iron Mountain. Monique discusses the importance of content in B2B marketing and how it can be leveraged across the buyer's journey. She emphasizes the need for companies to have a unique point of view and message bolstered by subject matter expertise that sets them apart from their competitors. Monique explains that thought leadership and highly valuable educational industry content sparks conversations and establishes trust with potential buyers. Monique emphasizes the role of the CMO as a business leader who understands industry trends, where the needs of the buyers are headed, and the implications for the company's future success.

Monique further emphasizes the importance that industry expertise has for the emotional connections between companies and buyers, which is equally as important as the products or services offered by the company. She explains it as a feeling. It's comfort. It's trust. It's all of those things wrapped into one. If you're not comfortable with the person or company providing you with whatever it is that you're looking to get, there's always going to be that tug. Did I make the right decision?

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In this interview with host Steve MacDonald, meet Stephanie Shreve, a MarTech CMO with over 25 years of marketing experience, as she shares a modern approach to the CMO's strategy and budgeting framework. In a time when marketing budgets are shrinking but expectations are not, Stephanie introduces the CORE-MORE-EXPLORE framework. This framework involves allocating 70% of the budget to known tactics that have proven to work (CORE), 20% to slightly outside-the-box strategies (MORE), and 10% to completely new and experimental tactics (EXPLORE). Stephanie emphasizes the importance of data and collaboration in gaining buy-in from the CFO and CEO. She also highlights the significance of thought leadership content in building trust and relationships with customers.

“We've got a really good approach to looking at in that planning stage; what are we going to do that we know well? What are we going to be willing to do outside the borders zone a little bit? And then what's that part where we're going to try something new?” - Stephanie Shreve

Stephanie talks about each area of the framework and how to maximize its potential. Click through to learn now. 

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💡 Vikram Bhaskaran, VP of Growth Marketing at ThoughtSpot, delves into the concept of the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) and its crucial role in contemporary marketing strategies. He also explores how understanding and leveraging ZMOT can help marketers better align their efforts with customer needs, leading to more effective engagement and conversion tactics. Vikram shares his journey from software engineering to marketing and emphasizes the importance of being customer-obsessed to truly address market needs. 💡

 "It's important to go back to the learning and governing dynamics. Can we build a stakeholder map for each if we have a list of target accounts? Are we able to understand why someone would need to come to us? Then, let's determine the distribution tactics for reaching them." - Vikram Bhaskaran

Vikram explores the crucial role of ZMOT in customer journeys, highlighting a study that reveals key business tipping points. He emphasizes account-based marketing, customer obsession, and inflection points as central themes for aligning marketing with customer needs. The discussion also covers how ABM aligns marketing strategies across organizational levels to improve revenue operations.

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Are you getting results from your email marketing for just pennies on the dollar? 

Join host Steve MacDonald as he delves into the world of email marketing with renowned expert Chip House. As a three-time B2B SaaS CMO and the CMO of Insightly, a leading marketing automation CRM tool, Chip brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table. 

In this episode, they explore successful email marketing strategies, the importance of measuring ROI, and the role of engagement metrics in campaign evaluation. Discover how to create quality content, build trust with your audience, and leverage post-click engagement for optimal results. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or just starting out, this podcast will provide valuable insights to enhance your email marketing campaigns.

“I've heard marketing automation touted before as a time saver—just set it and forget it. But I think if you're approaching marketing that way, you're doing it wrong. You need to be looking at the engagement metrics at every area of the journey and using it to personalize more and more.” - Chip House

In this interview with host Steve MacDonald, Amy Kohl, CEO and Founder of AK Operations, shares the revenue-driving activities that, when improved by just 1%, can have a profound impact on team focus and revenue creation from the top to the bottom of the funnel. Amy emphasizes the importance of the quality of the company’s content and assets. When the leadership team grasps the relationship between content and the ability to drive greater pipeline penetration and revenue impact through the power of 1% changes, they are seeing the results much faster than anyone else.

The interview's main takeaway is the continuous pursuit of 1% improvements in all aspects of the sales and marketing strategy. By focusing on small but meaningful enhancements, such as improving click-through rates, delivering high-quality content, fostering collaboration between teams, and personalizing the sales process, companies can achieve significant boosts in conversions and sales.

Amy stresses five main areas to focus on to create your own 1% success strategy, starting with just how powerful the “Power of 1%” truly is:

1. Why focus on the top of the funnel?
2. High-quality content that can multiply your conversion rates
3. Doing better than just playing the numbers game
4. Content themes that add value and conversion
5. Why you must be a partner, not a seller

In this interview, Amy also promises a spreadsheet that demonstrates the power of 1% increases on revenue and was also kind enough to put together a short video walking us through the spreadsheet as well.

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Join host Steve MacDonald in this engaging episode of B2B Marketing Perspectives as he sits down with Darryl Praill, an accomplished four-time CMO and two-time CRO with an impressive track record. Darryl, a renowned content creator and respected figure on LinkedIn, delves into the captivating topic of why B2B CMOs face rapid failure and presents an array of thought-provoking strategies to tackle this issue head-on.

Drawing from his extensive experience, Darryl emphasizes the critical importance of cultivating a deep understanding of external audiences and their needs. However, he also sheds light on a less-discussed aspect: the significance of internal stakeholders in ensuring a CMO's success. Recognizing that the company's leadership holds substantial influence over a CMO's tenure, Darryl underscores the need to foster strong internal relationships, manage expectations, and align marketing efforts with the unique requirements of various stakeholders, from sales to the CFO, CEO, and beyond.

Moreover, Darryl highlights the undeniable value of content creation, ranking it an emphatic 12 on a 1-10 scale for both CMOs and overall company success. Beyond this recognition, Darryl provides unprecedented, in-the-trenches advice on how to effectively collaborate with internal team members, prioritize content creation for demand generation marketing, and ensure seamless integration with sales activities.

Don't miss this captivating interview, where Darryl unravels the mysteries behind the swift failure of B2B CMOs and equips listeners with actionable insights to overcome these challenges.

Learn specifically through a series of highly action-oriented steps as Darryl paces us through the answers to reversing the failure rate of CMOs and achieving great success.

• Why do B2B CMOs fail so quickly?
• What should a CMO start doing?
  • Step 1: Start Talking to Customers
  • Step 2: Start Listening to Sales
  • Step 3: Set expectations with all executive leadership
  • Step 4: How to create a relationship with the head of finance
  • Step 5: How to set expectations around proving marketing’s ROI and overall expectations
  • Step 6: The importance of content to a CMO’s success
  • Step 7: How to get sales to be consumers of your marketing content and start using it
  
  
• What are the most important takeaways for addressing why B2B CMOs fail so quickly?

“You need to make content for all the people in your expanding buying committee, and they're going to advocate for you, or they're going to shoot you down and advocate for another alternative provider based on whether they find the answer to the pain they're experiencing in your solution. And the only way they will find that, because they have the attention span of a gnat, is in your content.” - Darryl Praill

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In this interview, Mariana Just, Vice President of Global Revenue Marketing for Acrolinx, discusses the critical importance of content marketing and how it impacts the overall success of a business in driving revenue. Mariana compares content to oxygen for organizations. She stresses that content is an asset with real, measurable value. Mariana has repeatedly proven that content is essential for demand generation and should not be considered an afterthought. She asserts that content impacts all stages of the buying cycle, serving to educate, sell, and provide a positive customer experience.

Mariana further stresses the importance of developing an opinion and narrative through thought leadership content. She mentions various formats, such as podcasts and fireside chats, that can help create communities and foster trust. Finally, Mariana emphasizes that building trust and becoming a partner to your buyers, rather than just a vendor, is crucial for long-term success.

“There is no demand generation without content. Some organizations say that they need to build their demand generation function and that engine—and want to bring content in later. Absolutely not! You either need to have that content machine going, or you bring them both together at the same time. That is absolutely vital.” - Mariana Just, VP of Global Revenue Marketing at Acrolinx

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Are you looking to increase the conversion rate of your leads? Having a hard time getting your marketing team to work well with sales? Want to have a fully integrated go-to-market effort from initial lead generation all the way through customer retention?

In this interview, Steve MacDonald interviews Nancy Maluso, a seasoned B2B marketing expert with a background as a leading CMO, a Chief Strategy Officer, a Forrester Analyst specializing in B2B GTM consulting, and former Vice President of Sales. Nancy shares her insider insights from consulting with B2B companies while at Forrester to implement sales and marketing strategies from the C-Suite.

Nancy talks about creating a 27% greater return if you have alignment on your executive level across your functional leaders.

To improve their effectiveness, B2B CMOs need to focus on collaboration, communication, and ongoing support for sales. They should have a holistic understanding of the customer beyond digital interactions. Nancy gives high-level strategic advice, combined with highly tactical suggestions like using conversational intelligence tools for listening into sales conversations between salespeople and buyers, learning how the sales story is crafted, and an ongoing study of buyer pain points and needs.

“While at Forrester and consulting with companies, I knew in the first meeting which companies would make it to an integrated go-to-market function and which ones would win just by the behavior of the sales and marketing leaders. What invariably happens is that one is not able to truly understand the value of the other.” - Nancy Maluso

Click through to learn from all nine of Nancy’s top recommendations.

Part one of this serious can be found in an Ebook, "Why B2B CMOs Fail So Quickly."

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Are you struggling with producing demand-generation campaigns that create meaningful sales conversations? Having a hard time expanding and scaling efficiently? Need a new perspective to get back on track or go to the next level?

In this podcast interview, Amy Kohl, CEO and Founder of AK Operations, shares 10 unbeatable go-to-market and conversion strategies that have yielded award-winning results. AK Operations, a fractional sales and marketing powerhouse specializing in scalable go-to-market and revenue operations programs, has mastered these strategies.

A key focus for Amy is the significance of understanding prospects on a profound level. AK Operations creates highly relevant ideal customer profiles by leveraging closed sales revenue data and insights. These profiles are a foundation for developing targeted content that educates and supports B2B buyers. Implementing highly targeted email nurture sequences allows them to swiftly test and refine messaging, resulting in a higher return on investment (ROI) through the initiation and scaling of meaningful sales conversations. Ultimately, the approach centers around staying relevant, providing resources, and genuinely addressing the challenges faced by prospects.

“Without quality content, the truth is that sales are always going to be a lot harder. And I love the consultative nurture aspects of serving first with key content pieces. Content needs to be a priority. And when it's not, you will feel it in the revenue you're able to attain.” - Amy Kohl

Amy underscores three foundational pillars that companies should never overlook: excellent content, strategic marketing automation, and meticulous management of contact databases. These pillars are pivotal in a go-to-market strategy, consistently driving deep pipeline penetration and facilitating revenue growth. 

This interview covers10 unbeatable GTM strategies to address the following questions:

1. How to engage and transition cold prospects into interested sales conversations?
2. How to nurture prospects with the right content that produces the greatest ROI?
3. Five content themes that have been tested and proven to be the most successful.
4. What content do most companies use that you want to stay away from one hundred percent?
5. Is there a direct correlation between high-quality content and generating revenue?
6. How much do you help support your client’s content efforts?
7. How do you test content to increase conversions?
8. How to transition cold email leads into “interested” email subscribers?
9. What goes into the initial cold-email sequence, and what’s the desired outcome or goal?
10. What is the third goal of the initial cold-prospecting emails?

Click through to learn from all 10 of Amy's unbeatable go-to-market recommendations.

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Are you struggling to create content marketing that impacts revenue? Having a hard time justifying growing your content budgets? Want to know how to overcome the biggest content marketing fail?

In this podcast interview, Mary Keough, the Head of Marketing at Map My Customers, sheds light on the Top 10 challenges faced in content marketing in the B2B sector. According to Mary, content holds the utmost significance and should be the focal point of any marketing strategy.

During the discussion with Steve MacDonald, Mary Keough delves into the major internal and skillset obstacles encountered in content marketing. She places great emphasis on securing support from the C-suite or leadership for any content marketing initiative. Additionally, Mary highlights a common oversight in content marketing regarding the selection of appropriate distribution channels. She believes that many B2B companies fail to make the necessary effort to ensure their content is disseminated across the right channels, such as organic social media, email, paid social, and more. Mary underscores the importance of actively selecting and promoting the right content to reach the intended target audience effectively.

Specifically, Mary shares insights into how her B2B company leverages podcasts to produce its highest-quality content. For starters, podcasts serve as a platform for interviewing customers and creating case studies, as well as conducting interviews with prospects to foster relationships. She discusses how podcast creation not only helps her company solidify its product-market fit and go-to-market strategy but also enables them to maintain connections with prospects who may not be ready to make a purchase yet. Finally, Mary emphasizes the significance of broadening perspectives in order to contribute value to the industry and shares her tips on how to grow your content budget that will blow you away.

Learn how Mary overcomes all the most important challenges content marketers face:

• Setting the stage for overcoming challenges to creating great content marketing
• Overcoming the greatest internal challenges
• Overcoming skillset challenges
• Overcoming the biggest content marketing fail
• Overcoming the challenges around content quality
• Overcoming sales challenges
• Putting perspective around content marketing challenges
• Addressing the challenge of how much to spend on content marketing
• The challenges of measuring and reporting on content marketing
• The overall takeaway around the challenges to running successful content marketing
• Overcoming the challenges of growing the content marketing budget

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Is your marketing creating deep pipeline penetration? Tied directly to revenue creation? Are your content, demand gen, and BDR teams fully aligned and collaborating?

In this interview, Acrolinx's VP of Revenue Marketing, Mariana Just, emphasizes the importance of team collaboration in today's complex business landscape. Acrolinx prioritizes pipeline opportunities and aligns the objectives of content marketing, demand generation, and business development teams. Acrolinx's revenue marketing model focuses on the entire sales funnel, with BDRs playing a crucial role in pipeline development. This collaborative approach integrates content marketing and data-driven insights to identify prospects and optimize demand-generation campaigns.

Mariana Just explains how marketing needs to contribute to revenue and how they have an all-hands-on approach to creating pipeline opportunities that go further into the funnel – beyond lead generation and the typical MQL qualification. Her point of view is that there's no demand generation without content marketing, and that everything they spend as a company on demand generation ends up on the desk of the BDR team—thus creating the need for ultimate alignment between these teams.

Listen now to learn all about the Acrolinx success model that is attributed to its shared compensation structure, aligned goals, and culture of collaboration, which transforms marketing into a revenue-creating machine. Mariana answers all these questions below and many more.

• How do you create the ultimate alignment between teams?
• What is your perspective on the team’s roles around MQLs?
• Is there a feedback loop on successful content creation and driving pipeline?
• How is marketing and pipeline penetration handled differently than at other companies?
• What is the biggest difference between a focus on MQL vs. pipeline?
• How do you define the role of the BDR team within pipeline development?
• What is the overall takeaway that you want to leave us with today?

This episode covers lead scoring, aligning with sales, utilizing different content forms, sparking conversations, and Chip's unique approach. The central focus of the discussion revolves around the evolving definition of the marketing qualified lead (MQL). Chip shares his belief that the definition of the MQL needs to evolve and offers valuable insights into the viability of this metric and its relevance to B2B companies.

In the past, the concept of the MQL has been frequently misused and manipulated by marketers, often fixating solely on the initial stages of the marketing funnel. However, Chip emphasizes the importance of looking beyond the top of the funnel and examining the entire customer journey across all channels. He advocates for a collaborative approach between marketing and sales to cultivate demand among a specific set of accounts over time.

During the podcast, Chip House and host Steve MacDonald discuss the evolving nature of the MQL and the need for marketers to adopt innovative strategies to effectively reach their target audience. They explore the role of Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) and how they can be leveraged to engage with the 97% of leads that don't fit the traditional definition of an MQL. This conversation provides valuable insights for B2B marketers seeking to navigate the changing landscape of lead qualification and optimize their marketing efforts.

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In this episode, fractional CMO Michael Baer argues that a strong brand and a comprehensive understanding of the customer are prerequisites for sustainable growth. Companies can create content that fosters meaningful interactions with their brand only when they truly comprehend their customers and their needs. By leveraging this understanding, businesses can develop a compelling and attractive differentiating factor that resonates with their target audience.

Michael goes on to emphasize that content acts as the lifeblood or 'oxygen' for any B2B brand. It catalyzes customers to engage with the company and begin envisioning it as a potential solution to their problems. By consistently providing valuable and relevant content, businesses can establish themselves as industry leaders with a unique POV and build trust among their audience.

Tune in to this enlightening episode as we explore the significance of content marketing in the B2B landscape and unravel the secrets to creating impactful and engaging content that captivates customers. Join us as we gain valuable insights from Michael Baer and Steven MacDonald on becoming a content-driven powerhouse in the B2B world.

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💡 Shashwat Ghosh, Former CMO at FieldAssist, discusses CMO Darwinism and its implications on the ever-evolving role of a Chief Marketing Officer. He also unveils the challenges CMOs face today and the pressing need for evolution in marketing strategies to stay competitive. 💡

"The era of CMO Darwinism is here. As a CMO, you need to take ownership of the go-to-market strategy and incremental modifications, while a good CMO will want to utilize the depth of experience from successful experiments." - Shashwat Ghosh

Shashwat discusses CMO Darwinism, focusing on the shorter CMO tenures and pressure for quick ROI. He links Darwinian evolution to evolving organizational roles and adapting go-to-market strategies in the digital era. He highlights the need for incremental GTM evolution, fractional marketing roles, customer insights, collaboration, and community engagement for success using his EPIC framework.

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Dawn Crew, a three-time B2B SaaS CMO, emphasizes the significance of content to marketing and sales success. The conversation delves into a range of six additional must-have tips on.

• How important is content to the role of marketing?
• How to use content to spark new conversations?
• How to qualify lead conversations in preparation for sales?
• How do you address the buyers that aren’t in the market today?
• How to create highly valuable, non-superficial content?
• Final words of wisdom from Dawn

This episode contains Dawn's invaluable marketing insights accumulated from numerous experiences throughout the years, conveniently compiled in a single interview.

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💡 Søren Vasø, Chief Marketing Officer at MapsPeople, delves deep into innovative B2B marketing strategies. Søren discusses the groundbreaking concept introduced in his book “Cloud Republic,” a strategy challenging traditional sales approaches and embracing the limitless potential of the cloud to effectively reach ideal customer profiles (ICP). 💡

"Instead of just having a kingdom and hiring a lot of armies to fight your wars, you can build a different business that goes out and creates a compelling story to capture that market." - Søren Vasø

Adopting a modern go-to-market strategy without traditional geographic limits is key in evolving industries like SaaS. Søren Vasø's Cloud Republic framework defines clear market boundaries and builds a loyal customer community that aligns with your brand's message. This approach emphasizes team alignment, fostering a customer-driven community, and using deep customer insights to fuel growth by harnessing the cloud's potential.

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💡 Zarina Stanford, CMO at Bazaarvoice, dives into how her storytelling skills transcend traditional marketing roles, advocating for dynamic leadership within the C-suite. She uncovers the transformation from marketing as a functional role to an influential business leadership position that defies the status quo, emphasizing the importance of authentic consumer voices and insights in shaping company strategies and narratives.💡

“Think big and be bold, because small changes won't be enough. There is no other discipline with the bragging rights of having the ability and the opportunity to truly craft and deliver what this big, bold vision can be.” - Zarina Stanford

Zarina shares her insights on leveraging consumer voices for authentic content marketing. She notes a shift in consumer behavior toward valuing authentic content from peers over brands. The discussion covers the changing marketing landscape, the importance of understanding ideal customer profiles (ICP), and how storytelling can enhance connections with audiences while inspiring brands to think big and empower partnerships.

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