GTM Live

On last night's episode of Demand Gen Live, Chris Walker and Megan Bowen covered the following topics:  Why marketers who create the most demand are the most in-demand; Pros and cons of category creation on SEO; A clearly defined playbook for creating demand; The value of SMEs creating content; How inefficiencies break as you scale; Intent data vs. actual intent; Marketing to different segments; Does SaaS marketing transfer to other industries; and Not blindly following advice.

Mark Roberge, Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital and former CRO at Hubspot, joined Chris on State of Demand Gen last week. They broke down common challenges with scaling B2B businesses, and Mark shared the top 5 reasons why SaaS businesses struggle with scaling. He shared why customer retention should be of heavier focus, and how to establish a leading metric for customer behavior since retention takes awhile to measure. He also explained what the three avenues of growth are and how they can be utilized to expand into a new market. Additionally, Chris and Mark jammed on inefficient sales processes and how sending your best leads to your least experienced sales professionals is a mistake that must be avoided. “I find that the founders jump too quickly to establish top line revenue as a North Star metric over customer success.”

Chris joined Hannah Munro on the CFO 4.0 Podcast to talk about how the role of marketing has shifted. He shared insights in regards to : better defining what a lead is, brand as a feeling, how the buying process has changed drastically over the past several years, why some of the most effective marketing strategies can't be measured, and how investing appropriately in marketing will drive business faster than an overinflated sales team. Register here for our recurring series with Dave Gerhardt, CMO at Privy. 

On last night's episode of Demand Gen Live, Chris and Megan covered the following topics:  Lead gen vs. Demand gen: how metrics and timing define your strategy Brand recognition Being realistic in regards to results Determining what makes most sense for your business to prioritize TODAY, not 10 years ago The curve of the adoption of innovation Insourcing vs. Outsourcing The importance of owning your CRM, your data, your tech stack, and your ad accounts internally Differences between LinkedIn personal & company page on LI strategies Why companies can’t, or don’t, innovate internally How marketing strategy misinformation can be often traced back to MarTech vendors Paying for attention vs. commanding attention When is it appropriate to recycle ad content Register for our recurring live series with Dave Gerhardt here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMucOuqqT0qHNH0y3ivTKPIUAHUUQgWwQmh

This episode was repurposed from when Chris joined Dave Gerhardt (CMO at Privy) for a conversation on the B2B Marketing Leaders podcast. They talked about unconventional growth levers, problem solving as a marketer, the importance of being in the details, and why a strong team makes everything easier. Chris dove into why measurement is flawed in marketing and how to use correlation and social cues as a means of measurement, and Dave shared that one thing marketers are not good at doing is thinking about both short-term pipeline generators and long term brand/revenue plays, like a podcast. Chris and Dave are putting on a recurring live event the first Thursday of every month. Registration is required (and free), so make sure to save your spot here and add it to your calendar.

Sam Kuehnle, Director of Demand Gen @ Refine Labs, hosted a Back to Basics session with Chris Walker about the buyer experience. They talked through the importance of reverse engineering your own buying process by challenging the ways people have previously done things and mapping the journey back to how people buy things today. Keep yourself honest by asking yourself when the last time a tactic you are currently employing worked on yourself. Sam and Chris talked through some of the most common mistakes companies make as well as assumptions and stereotypes that need to be replaced with actual customer insights from people who are in the market. “The journey is not linear.”

Chris Walker and Megan Bowen host this week's episode of Demand Gen Live. This episode covers some new topics in depth:   Strategy:  1. Why most companies don't create demand  2. How to use data to actually improve marketing performance  3. Just because it's inbound doesn't mean it's a good marketing strategy  4. It's' time to rethink what a website is for   Paid Social Deep Dive:  5. Copy in the creative is the #1 variable that determines whether or not your ad is successful  6. When to invest in a targeting tool like Metadata or Clearbit  7. Why creative is your secret weapon for maximizing smaller budgets  8. Why your lookalike audiences might be a trap 9. How to measure the success of a retargeting campaign Register here for our recurring live event with Dave Gerhardt (CMO at Privy).

Chris joined our good friends at Sweet Fish Media on the B2B Growth Show to talk about the difference between lead generation and demand generation. Chris shared his thoughts on why the idea of a funnel can be misleading when thinking of a modern buyer’s journey. They also discussed the differences between sales led and product led marketing and what steps a marketer could take to propel their career.

Collin Cadmus, Founder of Collin Cadmus LLC, joined Chris on the podcast to dissect his recent LinkedIn post that started with "Marketing is more important than sales." They discussed the importance in investing in building out your marketing team before scaling your sales team, and the challenges of rebalancing both teams when you've over-hired for sales. Collin shared the signals to look out for to tell you that you have too many sales reps. Marketing is the foundation for sales, and it's easier and more efficient to put that foundation in place before scaling the sales team so the reps are well equipped to do their job. 

This week on Demand Gen Live, Chris Walker and Megan Bowen broke down the difference between marketing sourced revenue and marketing influenced revenue, and which you should be focusing on. They also talked about how word of mouth amplified your marketing and the role of email nurture in B2B marketing and how to nurture prospects by other distribution means. After covering the agenda, Chris and Megan answered questions in regards to nurture campaigns, LinkedIn paid ads, and the importance of having an SME on board with creating content.