From Breaking B2B:

►  Is it really possible to start paid ads too soon as a b2b company?

Sam talks to Megan Bowen, CEO @ Refine Labs. They cover:

👉 5 milestones to nail before investing in paid ads

👉 How to nail each with a step-by-step

👉 Setting yourself up for success with b2b paid ads

See full videos and more on our YouTube channel

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Libby Schell and Malin Wijenayake join Steph Crugnola on Stacking Growth Snacks to talk about Remarketing campaigns. They cover the main objectives to consider when launching a campaign, and how to tailor your audiences most effectively. They also cover the basic process on building the campaign.

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On the April Expert Session, Chris Walker was joined by CS2’s Crissy and Charlie Saunders to do a deep dive into Marketing Operations to support measurement of Demand Strategies and Programs.

They discuss key requirements to set up a measurement framework to measure the effectiveness of demand programs including pipeline sources and how to think about funnel tracking. They also answer audience questions. 

Thanks to our friends at Hatch for producing this episode. Get unlimited podcast editing at www.hatch.fm

You pitched leadership, finally got buy-in, and just launched your program; now what? It's inevitable that you get questioned on the effectiveness of your new strategy early on, but creating demand takes time. So what are some early metrics and KPIs that you can report on to show leadership that it's working? In this episode, Ashley and Evan go through some of the early metrics that they report on with clients to do just that.

Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

We get a lot of questions from customers and community members this time of year on how to finish the year off strong and plan to have a successful Q1.

"What are some of the biggest mistakes you see marketing teams make as the fiscal year wraps up?"

"Are there any frameworks you use to build a marketing plan?"

"Where are you allocating your budget moving into 2023 and where do you think the biggest dividends will be paid in the year ahead?"

Q3 is coming to an end, and as you approach Q4 planning season, these are all important answers that need to be answered. Luckily, we have a little experience helping companies finish off the year strong and planning for 2023, and that's what we're doing in this episode. In addition to these questions, we also took live questions from the audience about 2023 planning, lessons learned in 2022, and more.

On today's Stacking Growth, Refine Labs' very own Sam Kuehnle and Sidney Waterfall breakdown an intriguing question sent in by a listener: "How do you deal with the paradox of wanting immediate results but needing to preach patience to your executive team?" From setting expectations to finding the right customer insights... believe it or not, good marketing takes time.

Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

At this point you all know our stance on talking to customers and extracting insights through those conversations. But some of the common questions we still get all the time are: 

"what is the best way to conduct a customer interview?" 

"What questions should I ask?"

"How do I take insights gleaned from a customer interview and inject them into my marketing strategy?"

In this episode, Tory and Matt talk with Michael Ashford, Director of Marketing at The Receptionist, about how they were able to achieve exponential growth without an outbound sales team by creating a demand strategy around the insights they learned from talking with customers regularly.

Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

It's that time of year—leaves are changing, football is back, and it's time for ANNUAL PLANNING! It's time to look back at the previous year, figure out what's been working and start to think about the campaigns and revenue targets for 2023.

In this episode, Tory and Allison go through the framework they use with clients for year-end demand planning.

Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

Events in the past were all about getting a booth, flying in all your salespeople, scanning badges, and having conversations on the show floor. But that’s not how the best marketing teams are approaching event strategy anymore. The best strategies involve building relationships, creating content, and leaving a lasting impression. So how do you do that through your event strategy in 2022 and beyond? In this episode, Sam and Sidney dive into just that.

Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

One of the most informative things you can do as a demand gen marketer is do a win/loss analysis. A win/loss analysis can do many things including validating messaging, help refine your ICP, inform your content strategy, and more. Some teams are already looking into why deals are lost, but it’s rare to see companies analyzing and comparing the reasons you won deals. Looking into both of these items are key to unlocking key insights to power a successful go-to-market strategy. In this episode, Tory welcomes Director of Demand Gen, Matthew Sciannella to talk about the incredible insights he is uncovering by doing this analysis.

Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

When asked about marketing innovation teams are quick to reference customer insights, category creation, and creating demand. And these are all very important things (that we preach at Refine Labs often). But there's one thing that is often overlooked and is a critical part of making all of these other strategies successful—Creative! Without an innovative creative strategy to deliver the message of your newly found customer insights or new category, you're shooting yourself in the foot. But what do we mean by "innovative creative"? 

In this episode, Triana, Devon, and Brianna of the Refine Labs creative team talk about how they define innovative creative and how they go about executing it for clients.

Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

Imagine being part of a sales-led organization where the SALES team is asking marketing to stop running lead gen and start creating demand. It's a role reversal that we don't often hear, but it's the exact situation that an audience member came to us with. "What steps can I take to get my marketing team to stop running gated lead gen and start creating real demand for our brand?" In this episode, Sidney and Sam tackle that exact question.

Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

An economic downturn can bring a lot of difficulties for a marketing team. Decreased media spend and decreased budget for tech from customers both lead to lower overall demand in the marketplace. When demand is lower, marketing teams have to focus on the levers they can influence, independent of those variables. In this episode, Sam and Sidney talk about the 4 levers that every marketer can pull to help better capture the demand in the market.

Our host, Steph Crugnola, is joined again this week by Sidney Waterfall to talk about The Inbound Buying Experience!

In this episode they walk through how to refine your website conversion process, how to leverage the people involved on all sides, and use technology to streamline the customer experience.

See the video on our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Many companies that run an enterprise, sales-led motion are now using some form of product-led growth to move down market. This poses a lot of problems for some demand-gen marketers, as it requires a different approach in both strategy and tactics to be successful. In this episode, Allison and Tory dive into the framework that we've been implementing with clients facing this here at Refine Labs.

Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

In the second part of our series on variable comp vs salary for salespeople Carl and Cassidy are taking questions from LinkedIn. Variable comp vs salary is a heated topic and salespeople had a lot of really good questions including:

• How to you test salary if you’re already using 50/50 comp?
• How does it affect the buyer experience?
• How do you measure performance?

Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

Relying on people to click your ad's CTA is destroying its effectiveness. Providing the full value in the feed will win out every time and we're here to prove that to you. Curious how you can do the same internally?

People don't want to leave the platform they're already engaged with. 99% of the time, even if someone is engaged with your ad, they're not clicking. So if your strategy is to use your social content to drive ebook downloads, blog traffic, email signups, or anything else that isn't native to the channel you're posting on, you are playing a losing game.

Amanda Natividad calls this "Zero Click Content" and she joined Tory Kindlick and Sidney Waterfall to talk about why delivering your message in the feed is so important, the tactics you can use to create effective content that doesn't require a "click", and how to measure marketing's impact.

Sales almost always work on a base salary + commission or 100% commission. Most companies don't offer salespeople guaranteed salaries for many reasons. But the question is why? There's no other function in the business that is paid the same way sales are. Some companies will say that they can't attract top talent without the ability to crush quota and earn uncapped commission. In this episode, Cassidy and Carl dive into this, as well as several other myths around the topic, and break them down.

Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

Does paid media influence how well a company’s marketing performs? It's a question that most marketers can relate to, but one that nobody is willing to test, because turning off paid media to see isn't an option. Well, in this episode we did just that—we tested the impact of paid marketing's correlation with organic marketing. Join Sam Kuehle and Ashley Lewin as they break down the test and results that may surprise you.

Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

As marketers, it's very common to become overwhelmed with data. It's important to use data to tell a story, but when doing that, you have to know which pieces to use and what is just noise. In this episode, Ashley Lewin and Evan Hughes talk about how to choose the right data to tell your story, how to structure your data story, and avoid overwhelming your audience when presenting that data.

Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

In this episode our General Manager, Sidney Waterfall, dishes out the best ways to create demand for your target accounts. She goes over Demand 101, Reach, and Tactics as a basic strategy to get your demand creation flowing and demand capture going. Keep an eye out for more Stacking Growth Live in the near future. 

Whether you want benchmark data or you're trying to convince your leadership that you need to be investing more time and resources into demand creation, this Stacking Growth Live is for you.

We analyzed pipeline source data from six B2B SaaS companies running the Refine Labs demand playbook.

We looked at:

- Pipe conversions (declared intent website conversions)

- Enterprise Outbound/”ABX”/Engaged Accounts
- Lead Gen
- Partner
- Events/Field

The results are astounding. In almost every case Pipe conversions significantly outperform every other pipeline source in win rate %, sales cycle length, number of opps, and pipeline velocity. But we didn't cherry-pick the best of the best just to prove a point. We also show some examples where Pipe conversions were not the top performer and dive into why that is the case. This new data paints a very clear picture of why you need to be creating demand as part of your go-to-market strategy.

Join Stacking Growth Live every other Wednesday at 1:00 PM ET by Registering here.

You're a marketer who is totally bought into creating demand. You presented to your leadership and they agree and you're now just getting started on your demand gen journey. The common question that comes up is, "when can we expect to start seeing results?" 

In this episode, Allison and Tory dive into that question exactly, but they go even further. They will touch on expectation setting to make sure your program doesn't get cut off before it ever has a chance to work and early indicators that tell you that you're making progress towards your end goal.

Subscribe to our Bi-Weekly Stacking Growth Live HERE.

This episode is summed up with a simple question: What is marketing at your org trying to accomplish and what is necessary from a tech stack perspective to simplify and make that process as efficient and effective as possible?

Marketing is not the promotion department, or at least it isn't in companies doing marketing correctly. Good marketing should be aligned with business metrics, so in essence, good marketing is good business. In this episode, Cassidy talks with Darrell Alfonso, Marketing Operations at Amazon and Author of “The Martech Handbook”.

In our March Expert Session, Chris Walker was joined by Navattic’s Natalie Marcotullio to explore the nuanced strategies around leveraging influencers and advisors within marketing strategies. As a topical issue amidst the dynamic terrain of B2B marketing, particularly within LinkedIn circles, their conversation sheds light on the practical implementation and tangible benefits of such programs.

Natalie explains the conception and execution of Navattic’s Advisor Program, and discusses the unique balance between strategic advisement and influencer advocacy, stressing the importance of aligning such programs with a company's ICP. She succinctly clarifies the program's structure that not only encompasses promotional endeavors but also heavily relies on strategies that guide the product's market trajectory. Further, she lays out their compensation structure and the significant role that direct revenue sharing, alongside monthly payments, plays in cultivating a robust, engaged advisory board.

Key insights are revealed into the essential elements of nurturing these advisor relationships. This includes maintaining a manageable number of advisors, gauging direct business referrals, appreciating the value of these advisors' strategic insights as much as their promotional influence, and the critical need for multifaceted measurement to capture true ROI.

Thanks to our friends at Hatch for producing this episode. Get unlimited podcast editing at www.hatch.fm

Over the past few years, B2B SaaS marketing teams have embraced the fact that they need to invest more in demand creation functions. In order to do that, budget has to be taken from current demand capture spend. The question is, what deserves to stay and what should be reallocated to demand creation? In this episode, Tory Kindlick talks with Sam Kuehle about the formula he has used to determine just that: what demand capture budget should stay and what should go.

Download the template from this episode here.

This is the first episode in a new series we are calling "Lab Experiments", where we talk to client-facing members of our team about the tests that they are currently running and the results that they are getting. In this episode, Tory Kindlick is talking with Ashley Lewin about a test she ran around messaging and positioning and how it led to a 40% increase in conversion rates.

Marketing and sales have a...colorful past to say the least. Marketing complains that sales doesn't follow up on their leads. Sales complains that the leads that marketing gives are not worth following up with. In many cases, both are true. 

But when marketing switches their strategy from generating high quantities of leads at any cost, which is the reason for the poor quality, it's no wonder that sales doesn't want to follow up with them. They're the ones in the trenches and they know better than anyone what types of leads close and which ones are a waste of time.

However, when marketing switches from collecting leads to creating demand, the result in the quality of "lead" that comes through gets drastically better and sales need to prioritize them.

The question becomes, how can sales and marketing work together to ensure that the people coming inbound and asking for a demo are the right people and are being followed up with in the right way?

In this episode, Carl Ferreira, Allison Loehman, Sidney Waterfall, and Cassidy Shield talk about how we do that at Refine Labs and how we help customers do the same.

Tory Kindlick hosted today's Stacking Growth episode with Darren Perucci to share tips about marketing with a reduced budget. We are seeing budgets being cut especially across the SaaS space due to the economic downturn, and as marketers we are being asked to do more with less. 

This episode consists of a recording from Sidney Waterfall's appearance on the Demand Gen Chat podcast, hosted by Chili Piper. They talked through leading indicators, measuring the impact of dark social, and the importance of gathering feedback directly from your customers. 

On last week's Stacking Growth Live, we covered a timely topic - how to shift your marketing strategy to match what's happening in the market. It's clear we are headed into a recession. Budgets are being slashed and therefore, there isn't as much demand to capture. In last week's event, we talked through manufacturing demand, customer insights and marketing's role in the shift, and budget & team management in a downturn. 

Tory Kindlick (VP of Demand Gen) hosted a solo episode today where he broke down the 5 most common traits he's observed in the B2B SaaS companies that are most successful with creating demand. 

Carl Ferreira and Cassidy Shield recorded a Friday afternoon conversation about the lack of innovation in outbound sales compared to that of marketing. They talk through why that is, how to bridge the gap, providing value and data as part of your outbound motion, and the four key components to outbound sales. By the end of the episode, you should have a handful of ideas for experimenting with innovation in your outbound motion. Stay tuned for a part 2 with results of Carl's outbound demand creation experiment. 

Today's episode consists of a recording from last week's Stacking Growth LIVE event, where Cassidy Shield, Tory Kindlick and Darren Perucci talked through whether or not brand and demand should be on the same team. They talked through definitions, org structure, roles and responsibilities, the nuances between brand marketing and demand marketing, and the similarities between the two.

Our host, Steph Crugnola, is joined again this week by Sidney Waterfall to talk about The Inbound Buying Experience!

In this episode they define the inbound buying experience, talk about ways to optimize the process for your buyers, and cover core KPIs and measurement tools.

See the video on our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Nick Bennett (Director of Evangelism and Customer Marketing @ Alyce) and Arthur Castillo (Senior Manager, Field Marketing & Community @ Chili Piper) joined Stacking Growth LIVE last week as guests to discuss how to leverage content and community in both B2B SaaS and their personal brands. 

*Snippets of this episode are spotty due to poor internet connection*

Cassidy Shield (CGO), Victoria Sakal (The Vault), Daniel Pinkston (Performance Marketing Manager) and Myles Madden (Performance Marketing Manager) hosted today's Stacking Growth episode to talk about measuring brand and demand creation. They cover leading and lagging indicators, adopting a long-term mindset, how and where to create demand, and which qualitative and quantitative metrics you should be tracking.

Whether you know it or not, most of the decisions you make throughout your day (especially purchasing decisions) are driven by cognitive biases. Everyone views the world, brands and products differently based on their experiences and unique worldview. So what does that mean for you as a marketer? Tory Kindlick (VP of Demand) and Braeden Matson-Jones (Performance Marketing Manager) dive into cognitive biases in today's episode of Stacking Growth. They talk about communities and other non-attributable touchpoints, as these are great examples of social influence and cognitive biases that influence purchasing decisions. Tory and Braeden also touch on negative social influence and how that can adversely affect your marketing efforts. 

Tory Kindlick (VP of Demand Gen) and Tylor Jones (Director of Demand Gen) hosted this Stacking Growth episode on the topic of: how to overcome the internal obstacles that come with switching from a solely demand capture model to a demand creation model. Tylor carried out this change in phases at his previous organization and brings his experience to the table for this episode.

A successful GTM strategy starts with a strong foundation. A strong foundation starts with an understanding of the customer/market & being able to uniquely position yourself vs. others. This episode consists of a recording from our most recent Stacking Growth LIVE event. This installment was hosted by Cassidy Shield (Chief Growth Officer), Victoria Sakal (The Vault), and Tony Flores (Senior Director, Demand Generation). After listening to this episode, you'll be equipped with a framework that will empower you to assess and improve your current GTM Foundation in terms of customer insights, competitive intelligence, and positioning/messaging.

Register for the Stacking Growth LIVE event series here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUkde6upzMjGN2BIuhVJXj73cZNk2KuO3yn

Judy Sheriff (General Manager) hosted today's Stacking Growth episode with Myles Madden (Performance Marketing Manager) and Lex Winship (Senior Copywriter). They talked about the importance of sharing data, insights, and feedback with your creative team, the difference between content creation and distribution (as well as how they work together) and why the creative team needs a seat at the table. 

Tory Kindlick (VP of Demand Gen) and Matt Sciannella (Director of Demand Gen) talk about breaking into SaaS marketing on today's episode of Stacking Growth. They share tips for anyone looking to get into this space in additional to dropping insights for those already in SaaS marketing. Hot take: you don’t need to have extensive experience in SaaS to be an effective SaaS marketer. However, Tory and Matt walk through differences between SaaS marketing and marketing in other types of companies, as well as which traditional marketing principles span across industries.

Cassidy Shield (Chief Growth Officer) hosted today's episode of Stacking Growth with Matthew Bramson (Director of Strategic Accounts at MANTA) to talk through the mindset shift needed to sell into large enterprises at organizations that are disrupting the status quo, but don't have strong brand recognition. They cover selling with an abundance detached mindset, selling up to senior leadership, measuring brand, and what sales teams need from their marketing organization to have a well-functioning relationship.

Today's episode consists of a recording from last week's Stacking Growth LIVE where Sidney Waterfall (VP of Demand) and Cassidy Shield (Chief Growth Officer) discussed Refine Labs' proprietary PIPE™ Framework - specifically the HIRO (High Intent Revenue Opportunity) stage and why marketers need to start measuring this instead of MQLs.

Register for the Stacking Growth LIVE event series here.

In our February Expert Session, Chris Walker was joined by Cognism’s Alice De Courcy to talk about the transformative journey of marketing strategies from lead generation to demand generation. The dialogue revolves around the pivotal shifts in B2B Go-to-Market and digital demand tactics, revealing the forward-thinking practices leading today's marketplace. 

Alice unfolds the rationale behind moving from a lead gen to a demand gen strategy and emphasizes the importance of evaluating revenue-driving factors within marketing initiatives. By analyzing the revenue models and aligning with organizational targets, she expresses how Cognism made significant strides in efficiency. The episode further explores metrics and KPIs vital in gaining executive alignment during marketing transformations, demonstrating the practical aspect of transitioning strategies without overwhelming the organization.

Thanks to our friends at Hatch for producing this episode. Get unlimited podcast editing at www.hatch.fm

Tory Kindlick (VP of Demand Gen) hosted this episode with Matt Wilbanks (Director of Demand Gen) and Jonathan Unger (Director of Demand Gen). The main topic of this episode is how to talk to VCs, investors, and boards of directors about demand gen. Tory, Matt, and Jonathan cover how to navigate funding, QBRs, and results as well as their top recommendations on how to prepare for these conversations.

Today's episode of Stacking Growth consists of a recording from Clearbit's recent webinar, "Paid Advertising in a World of Rising Costs," hosted by Colin White (Head of Demand Generation at Clearbit) and Sidney Waterfall (VP of Demand at Refine Labs). In this episode, they cover rising CAC and what you can do about it as a marketer. 

After listening to this episode, you can expect to learn:

• Why demand for digital ads is outpacing available inventory, 
• How to respond to worsening targeting power on ad platforms, and 
• Where to focus your go-to-market efforts for efficient spend

Sidney Waterfall (VP of Demand) and Judy Sheriff (General Manager) hosted today's Stacking Growth episode to break down hybrid attribution - what it is (and is not), how to put it into practice, and some common questions and scenarios they see when implementing and analyzing hybrid attribution in the B2B space. After listening to this episode, you'll have a better understanding of how to mesh self-reported attribution with existing technology & attribution software to get a more comprehensive, contextual picture of your buyers' journeys.