Why Marketers Must Shift from the Funnel to the Flywheel with Chandar Pattabhiram, CMO of Coupa

This episode features an interview with Chandar Pattabhiram, CMO of Coupa. Chandar has more than 25 years of experience in strategic marketing and management consulting, including his previous role as CMO at Marketo. As CMO of Coupa, he is responsible for driving all aspects of worldwide marketing including strategic segment marketing, product marketing, growth marketing and corporate marketing.

On this episode, Chandar breaks the mold on demand gen, explaining why you should be thinking of it in terms of growth marketing and revenue gen, and he illustrates his flywheel approach to marketing that goes far beyond the traditional funnel model.

Key Takeaways

• Expand your view of demand gen–view it as growth marketing, and even as revenue gen. Those terms are important because what you call it and how you view it gets permeated throughout your organization.
• It’s important to view marketing as a flywheel of activities as opposed to the traditional funnel model. The flywheel approach consists of awareness, acquisition, expansion, and advocacy.
• A step that’s missing in growth marketing in a lot of organizations is adoption marketing. Adoption marketing is about ensuring that your customers are successful with what they’ve already bought before you go about trying to expand your presence in their business.
• Instead of running big virtual events and claiming victory on vanity metrics, marketers should consider the value of “circles,” which are smaller, more intimate gatherings that are easier to engage and have a much greater impact on deal-acceleration.

Quotes

• “I don’t use the words ‘funnel’ or ‘demand gen.’ We call it revenue marketing. Because why do any marketing unless it’s for revenue?”
• “Your job in marketing is to find the fastest path to the most dollars for the sales organization. That’s the guiding principle at the end of the day.”
• “Value is one divided by vanity. You have to take the vanity metrics out of it...We are looking for value, not vanity. If my goal is deal acceleration, I should not be worried about vanity metrics, I should only be worried about value metrics.”
• “Advocacy marketing is not them advocating for you, it’s you advocating for them. If you’re doing it well, you’re showcasing how your customers are driving transformational change in their organizations.”
• “Your best salesperson is your customer. if you’ve done a good job of driving value, they’re going to do the selling for you.”
• “I view our website as the most strategic weapon in marketing...I view it as a vehicle for conversation, not just one-way information dissemination. It can be a vehicle to start a conversation and move it forward in the journey. It’s an important asset for us in that way, and it’s a top lead-generation tool as well.”

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