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Marketers love to hate on "vanity" metrics, and rightfully so. But the problem is, they are misdiagnosing vanity metrics and using the real vanity metrics to make strategic decisions. I'm talking about MQLs, eBook downloads, website visits, blog views, etc. These may have been important KPIs back in 2011 when marketing's only goal was to find fit and feed leads to sales. But this isn't 2011. Sales teams can have tools like Zoominfo to find contacts that have fit. Marketing needs to shift their focus to intent. The new goal is to generate demand at the highest level of the funnel—the level you're not even playing in right now. In this episode, Chris talks about what metrics you need to start looking at and how to turn those metrics into revenue.

You don't need more budget. In fact, less budget would probably help you do a lot more with your marketing dollars. The sad truth is that marketing teams across industries almost universally wasting money. Poor strategy and even worse execution can't be helped by more budget. And most marketing teams are converting at less than .1%. In this episode, Chris talks about how to rethink marketing strategies to eliminate waste and drive results. 

If you're in sales you're certainly thinking, "Demos?! Really??" And our answer is a resounding, Yes! But there's a small catch. It's time for marketers to rethink what a demo consists of. In the past (and as we record this podcast), a demo is when you go on a website, fill out a form and request to talk to a salesperson to see it in action. But as a marketer, your goal in 2022 and beyond needs to shift from feeding leads to the sales team and executing sales at scale. Sales shouldn't be responsible for educating the prospect on what their pain points are and how the product can alleviate them. That's marketing's job and it should've been clear long before a demo was requested. So if that task now falls into marketing, the question is, how do you effectively execute demos at scale? Effectively being the keyword there... The answer is to change the way you define a demo. In this episode, Chris talks all about how B2B marketing needs to start getting prospects 95% closed before they even talk to a sales rep.

Positioning is the foundation on which your business is built. But most business leaders don't fully understand what good positioning is, let alone how to execute it successfully. In this episode, Chris talks one-on-one with April Dunford, widely regarded as one of the top minds on the subject matter. April goes through her 5 components of positioning that every organization needs to address including competitive alternatives, differentiated capabilities, value, segmentation, and market category.

What if I were to tell you that the way that you measure attribution is driving terrible business decisions and leading to huge amounts of wasted dollars? If you've been listening to this podcast for any period of time, you know that in order to make good strategic marketing decisions in 2021 and beyond, you need to fundamentally shift the way you think about attribution. Common sense would tell you that marketing attribution software can't measure word of mouth, community referrals, social media engagement, podcast listens, and more. Yet these are the things that are driving the most impact in modern marketing. In this episode, we talk about the shift in thinking you need to embrace, as well as how you can start executing better attribution techniques.

As much as you wish it was, marketing is not a math equation. It's not even a science. And thinking it is, is an outdated idea that you need to unlearn ASAP. Marketing is an art. And the fact that comes along with that truth is that everything you do can't be measured with hard quantitative data. The real results come when you look deep into the qualitative data that helps you understand your customers. In this episode, we dive into what you need to do to unlearn the old and how to measure what really matters.

Marketers are lying to themselves and their sales teams. They complain when sales can't seem to close their MQLs into won opportunities, but let's face it, the leads don't close because they're anything but qualified. It's the reason sales have such disdain for marketing. Instead of trying to flood sales with as many email addresses as you can, you should be trying to filter them the highest intent leads out there—the 1% that are ready to buy. We're talking about demand generation in dark social.  But how do you measure that? How do you know it's working? In this episode, Chris talks with Ray Rike about how to optimize for high intent leads and the metrics that will tell you if you're doing it properly.

The best marketing in the world right now is being done behind closed doors. By people that don't work for the brand. And don't benefit from referring it. I'm talking about communities. And the top-tier marketers are cultivating groups of die-hard fans, not by pitching products, but by offering access to subject matter expertise. But building a community isn't as simple as creating a Facebook group or slack channel. So what are the keys to getting a strong community off the ground? Today Chris is talking to Dave Gerhardt, founder of the DGMG community. Together they will compare and answer questions about how they were able to build two of the strongest communities in B2B.

Buyers in 2021 and beyond want less involvement from a salesperson when doing product research. When buyers want to do most of the buying before talking to sales, it becomes a marketing-owned journey. And that is precisely why there has never been a better time to be a B2B marketer! In today's episode, Chris talks about what the top 1% of marketers are doing, why they're going to be on the same pay level as top salespeople, and what you need to do to get there. Register to join us live for the Demand Gen Live: Expert Series with Dave Gerhardt, Nov 4 @ 9:00 AM EST: https://bit.ly/3CtJrU7

Talking to customers is one of the most under-utilized opportunities that marketers take advantage of. The learnings from talking to a single customer will change the way you do content creation. Do it at scale and you'll change the trajectory of your organization. But how do you get started? The easiest way—leverage the teams within your org that already talk to customers (like customer success) and piggyback off those meetings. You'll be glad you did!Register to join us live for the Demand Gen Live: Expert Series with Dave Gerhardt, Nov 4 @ 9:00 AM EST: https://bit.ly/3CtJrU7