Pipeline Visionaries

Key TakeawaysSEM and SEO have to work together.You can’t just appeal to the rational side of your audience. You have to also appeal to the emotional side as well.People forget how video humanizes marketing through the “show” aspect of the “show don’t tell” side of marketing.Quotes“Nobody sees through BS faster than another marketer. There's a level of transparency, honesty, and integrity that I think marketers need to bring to the table when they're marketing to their peers.” “I have been and will continue to be–and the numbers prove it–a believer in search. SEM works no matter how you slice it. SEM is not a one and done. You have to water and trim the plants every single day because it really requires attention. You have to understand the market. You have to be thoughtful about what you’re investing in and continue to iterate.” “Our website is conceptually the center of our demand creation universe. No matter what else we're going to do, we're trying to bring people back to the website to spend time there or to download content or complete a ‘contact us’ form. I look at the website as a living, breathing, entity and the second you take your eye off it and say, ‘it's good,’ you're wrong. You have to cultivate it and think about the experience that you're delivering and be willing to change things.” “For a first time CMO, I’d give the following advice: You are going to make mistakes. That's part of the deal. Don't forget that in the making of these mistakes, that’s how you start to learn what's actually going to resonate with your audience and you can't be afraid of that.”SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.Connect with Norman on LinkedInFollow Norman on TwitterSubscribe to Norman’s SubstackAcoustic is hiring!Follow Ian on TwitterConnect with Ian on LinkedIn

Season 1 of Demand Gen Visionaries featured luminaries at some of the world’s most innovative companies like Salesforce, Slack, and Google who shared strategies, insights, and ideas for maximizing sales pipeline amidst a shift to an all-digital world. And we’re just getting started.Tune in to the premiere of Demand Gen Visionaries Season 2 on June 8th. We’ve got some heavy-hitters and master marketers like our friends at G2, Datadog, InVision, and Procore joining the show. We’ll dive deep into post-pandemic trends and how industry pioneers are returning to the new normal. If you thought Season 1 was good, you won’t want to miss a moment of Season 2.

Key TakeawaysMost boards don’t have marketing leaders, but all boards have operators (GMs, CEOs, etc.) and successful ones have an understanding of marketing.If trends continue, more and more CMOs will become CEOsCMOs and CROs should be locked at the elbowsQuotes“I believe what separates the sales leaders from those who stay as CROs, to those who go on to become general managers or CEOs is actually an understanding of marketing.”“A key skill for any CMO is the ability to say no. Just don't say it too often. I believe both parts of that. You have to be able to say no, but you don’t want to become Dr. No, that doesn't work. So, you should have yes, no, and let's do an experiment.“The CMO should be locked at the elbow with the CRO. They should answer each other's phones on the first ring. They should have a good personal relationship. They should be aligned in meetings. One should take a bullet for the other. If one's getting shot at in the board meeting, the CMO should dive in front of the VP of sales or vice versa.” “Market vision while selling product. We market a vision to the customer that gets them excited about where we're going. Because when [customers] buy these apps, [they’re] not just buying what's on the truck today. We sell what's on the truck, but they buy into this broader vision.”“My credo has been ‘make sales easier’… I’ve built my career on it. And ironically, some of the biggest arguments I've had about that little phrase have been with sales leaders. They’ll say, ‘No, that's not what marketing's about,’ and I'm like, ‘Yeah, it is. That's why we're here.’ That's my philosophy and I’ve practiced it to the extent that it even surprises people sometimes.”“Marketing is the entire business scene from the point of view of the customer.” — Theodore Levitt, Former HBS Marketing professorSponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.Follow Ian on TwitterConnect with Ian on LinkedInFollow Dave on TwitterConnect with Dave on LinkedInDave’s blogDave’s podcastwww.caspianstudios.com

Every week on Demand Gen Visionaries we sit down with marketing leaders from some of the world’s largest and fastest-growing companies to uncover the demand gen strategies that have been fundamental to their skyrocketing success.In each episode, we ask our marketing-leader guests which three areas of investment are most important to their demand gen initiatives. Tune into this special mini-series to hear the budget items our CMO guests can’t live without!Find parts one and two herePart three of this special mini-series features 12 CMOs and marketing leaders from some of the world's fastest-growing companies, including:Vidya Peters, CMO, MarqetaLeela Srinivasan, CMO, SurveyMonkeyGrant Johnson, CMO, EmburseRobin Daniels, CMO, MatterportJoanie Wang, Director of Marketing, ExpensifyRachel Thornton, SVP Marketing, Amazon Web ServicesEsther Flammer, VP Demand Gen, CongaMarie Gassée, VP Growth, ConfluentLynne Capozzi, CMO, AcquiaLen Fischer, SVP Demand Gen, OktaDave Dabbah, CMO, CleverTapNaman Khan, CMO, ZeplinKey TakeawaysPaid digital became even more important as a result of the pandemicInvest in a robust MarTech stackEvents are still going strong, they just look differentSponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.LinksFollow Ian on TwitterConnect with Ian on LinkedInFind parts one and two here

This episode features an interview with Susan Ganeshan, CMO of Granicus.Susan is a multiple-time CMO with an impressive 25-year marketing career that includes leadership roles at Clarabridge, newBrandAnalytics, and Deloitte Consulting.On this episode, Susan discusses the unique challenges and opportunities that come with selling exclusively to government entities. She also expands on her career-long objective to convert leads faster, why she says there is no silver bullet in demand gen, and her philosophy that you have to do everything right.Key TakeawaysThere is no silver bullet in demand gen, which is why every component of the funnel must be done right.If you don't have a highly functioning BDR team,  you might as well take your leads and throw them into a lead graveyard. Beware of treadmill marketing. Get off the treadmill of constantly producing one small thing at a time, and create a strategy.Quotes“I have a philosophy on demand gen and my catchphrase is ‘there is no silver bullet.’ There's no one thing you can do that will make an amazing demand gen cycle, so you have to do everything right. You have to think of the entire funnel from top to bottom…and everything in that cycle has to be pristine. If there's even a little bit of fray on that thread, it will break. There’s no silver bullet, you have to do it all right.” “When you don't have a highly functioning BDR team–and I've talked to hundreds of CMOs about this–you might as well take your leads and throw them into a lead graveyard. Because salespeople don't have the diligence or the time to follow up in the way a BDR team does, and have a multi-touch cadence and that practice of continuing to go after those hot leads. So I would say that the people-spend that is probably most important to me is that BDR function.”“When you have a hot lead, it has a half-life, and you have to catch them while they're hot. That's been my objective as a CMO for a long time is to really focus on the speed at which we're talking to these people, catching them while they're thinking of us. The cool thing about Qualified is that when someone visits our website, we can use the Qualified workflow and logic to understand what pages they landed on...Qualified routes that person to a live conversation and my BDRs can start the conversation with them instantly.”“What we've found is that when someone requests a demo, about 10% of those are going to turn into opportunities. When someone comes through Qualified, it's 25%. It's remarkable.”“Memories are short. Catching someone in real time while the information is fresh and top of mind can make a dramatic difference in the overall conversion metrics."“You’ve got to do everything right, but don't let that overwhelm you. Start tackling one thing at a time, but make sure it's all strung together. There is no silver bullet. Don't let sales tell you that if only they had a single one-pager that they could get the deal done because they will keep telling you that.”“I call it treadmill marketing, when you are constantly producing one little small thing for sales, but it's not being reused or scalable in any way in the organization. And you're on the treadmill, you're running, running, running, but you're going nowhere. Get off the treadmill, create a strategy, and make sure it goes all the way through the funnel and pulls the string tight. Make sure it's consistent.”SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.LinksFollow Ian on TwitterConnect with Ian on LinkedInFollow Susan on TwitterConnect with Susan on LinkedIn

This episode features an interview with Jamie Domenici, CMO of LogMeIn, a pioneer in remote work technology that has become one of the world’s largest SaaS companies.Prior to LogMeIn, Jamie spent ten years at Salesforce, serving in various marketing leadership positions including Global Senior Vice President of Customer Adoption, Marketing and Business Development.On this episode, Jamie shares her secrets on how to dominate the SMB market, why product-led growth is the key to the future of SaaS, the complexities of marketing a large portfolio of digital products, and where B2B marketing is headed in the future.Key TakeawaysWrite down these words: Simplicity through efficiency to drive growthPLG is key to the future of where SaaS is goingSimplicity matters. What would the T-Shirt say?Quotes“You’ve got to go where the customer is, especially in this current digital environment. And if they're in your product, it's so much easier to upsell and cross-sell there versus email or webinar or an area where you have to pull in. Having post-sale experience helped me to understand PLG because I think you have to look at that full funnel, and you’ve got to go where the customers are to really drive efficiencies within your marketing org.”“Back in the nineties, marketing was all about leads and MQLs, and many companies are still there, but the modern marketer is responsible for a heck of a lot more. The world is digital, and I think B2C has driven a lot of B2B behaviors and the consumer is so key. So for me, the digital experience is the most efficient way to spend and it's critical to building your brand and driving traffic.”“One of my most important measures now is actually website traffic as a key driver, because if I can fill this funnel, then all of the things I'm putting in place between e-com, PLG, sales optimization–that funnel is going to work, I just need to bring people in. I find driving awareness and building your organic website traffic is key to that long-term growth for a high-transactional company.”“Simplicity matters. Whenever I start at a new company or a new role or a new team or a new campaign, I always do this exercise which is ‘what would the t-shirt say?’ I give everybody a t-shirt and try and synthesize the message of the campaign down to what would be on a t-shirt…and I use that as the basis to drive this thematic approach to the campaign that you'll steel thread through every tactic. It helps your team to not over-complicate…if you just really narrow it down to what you want to say to your buyer in the simplest form, I think it really helps you build a cohesive strategy around it.”SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.LinksFollow Ian on TwitterConnect with Ian on LinkedInFollow Jamie on TwitterConnect with Jamie on LinkedIn

This episode features an interview with Christelle Flahaux, Vice President of Marketing at FortressIQ, a pioneer in the burgeoning field of process intelligence.Christelle is a seasoned professional drawing on two decades of experience in marketing, including senior leadership roles at some of the tech industry’s most recognized and fastest-growing B2B companies. Prior to joining FortressIQ, she served as CMO of Planful, formerly known as Host Analytics.On this episode, Christelle lays out her approach to category creation and why content and analyst relations play key roles in marketing an emerging category. She also discusses why the CMO’s job is to be a listener, the content value of podcasting, and how to do ABM with food trucks. Key TakeawaysCategory creation means spending time with analysts and making it seem like it was their idea.Use analyst relations as a demand gen engine and treat it like a budget item.Repurpose your content. Quotes“Growing up in demand gen, I never realized how important analysts were…But what I've realized is that the relationship that you have with the analysts, being on their radar, always being in front of them, being a customer of some sort–I think that to me is uncuttable now. Six or seven years ago I would not have even brought up analysts, but I think analysts are very important.”“I'm a huge fan of repurposing content. Do one thing and create six or seven pieces of content…I think that's what a lot of marketing teams get wrong is they always start with a fresh piece of paper…But it's not always about creating something from scratch.”“The website's the front door to any company. You think about someone's first interaction with you as a potential vendor, and it's the website…You've got five seconds to wow somebody.”“80% of people have probably already done their homework…And if they want to talk to you, they're going to reach out, which is why conversational marketing and chat is so hot right now, because it is such a low barrier to entry for me [as a prospective customer] to have a conversation with somebody and set up a demo. I just want to see the product. Period, end of story. Don't pitch me, don't ask me what my problems are, I already know what my problems are.”“[My advice to a first-time CMO is] just listen. Do what you can to listen to the salespeople and to your customers. Before you do anything, make sure you understand your current state, what is actually happening, where you need to focus. And the only way you can do that is to be a listener. I say my first 30 days are usually spent as resident therapist for a lot of people because they always want to tell the new person what's wrong and how they would fix it. It's your job to understand the lowest common denominator and work your way through that list.”SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.LinksFollow Ian on TwitterFollow Christelle on Twitterwww.fortressiq.com

This episode features an interview with Naman Khan, CMO of Zeplin.Naman is an accomplished marketing leader with experience across B2B and B2C marketing and sales at some of the largest companies in the world. Before joining Zeplin, he served as VP of Marketing at Dropbox, VP of Product Marketing at Salesforce, and held marketing leadership roles at Microsoft and Autodesk.On this episode, Naman discusses his journey from some of the world’s most recognizable brands to being a first-time CMO and standing up a new marketing organization. He also shares how he learned to harden messaging frameworks from Marc Benioff and more of the fascinating insights and most successful campaigns from his time at Salesforce and Dropbox.Key TakeawaysHow to harden messaging frameworks. It takes prioritization and curation.Content is an investment, it doesn’t happen on its own.Succeeding is great, but learning is way better.Quotes“I've been through messaging frameworks many times over my many years. There's only a handful of messaging that I've seen done well…When people like Marc Benioff review a messaging framework, they know what good looks like, so you learn how to harden messaging frameworks. You learn how to create really simple content that optimizes for simplicity instead of completeness or accuracy…What you really want to do is think about your user…You'll be lucky if they remember two or three things, so optimize for two or three things. This sounds so simple, but unless you've done it the hard way, it's very easy to keep making those mistakes.”“We all want that very simple, elegant, pithy ‘A thousand songs in your pocket’ that kind of says it all. I don't think it's always going to happen, but that's the goal–to get to where you curate a message that people totally get…but that comes from curating and prioritizing. You really have to invest in it. Otherwise, you just end up with kind of flat, generic sounding messaging that you can just take your logo off and put a competitor's logo on.”“When people think of tactics, they may not always think of website. But because we're a hybrid self-service and sales-assist model, our website is super, super critical. So making sure that the website is optimized for top of funnel, middle, and purchase is important. And again, that doesn't just happen. You have to be very thoughtful about when you update your website with different features, when you want to run a promo, when you want to spin up a landing page, and how that will affect the overall kind of revenue footprint for your company.”“Growth experiments and our MarTech stack–I put those together because you just can't have one without the other. For us to drive revenue and drive demand, it's all about running experiments through the high volume of visitors and the high volume of freemium traffic that we get.”“Succeeding is great, but learning is way better. The reason is marketing isn't just rinse and repeat. You can't have done growth optimization at one company, come do the exact same thing at another company, and think that anything will ever look the same. There are just too many variables.”“You can glean a lot of insight if you invest in data science. You can actually build a pretty complete picture of what the user is doing. You see that in other industries like social media–they know what I'm going to have for lunch right now, it's kind of bananas. So if you invest in really learning about your customer–quant, qual, take a look at how they use your app, and you iterate on it and become really good at it, it makes for much more sophisticated, targeted, high-ROI marketing.”SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.LinksFollow Ian on Twitterhttps://zeplin.io/

This episode features an interview with Dave Dabbah, CMO of CleverTap, the leading AI-powered customer engagement and retention platform.Dave has been leading high growth marketing teams in Silicon Valley for the past 20 years. Prior to joining CleverTap, he led marketing at Agora, and he currently serves as an advisor and board member for several Silicon Valley startups.On this episode, Dave details his strategy for building a growth brand in the B2B space, the unique challenges of being a global company and evaluating international markets, and why it’s your job as a marketer to always make things memorable.Key TakeawaysIt all starts with the most basic principle: Know who you’re trying to sell to. What exact problem are you solving for them?You probably need to be doing 10X as much ABM as you’re currently doing if you’re trying to grow at scale Whether it’s in product naming, branding, re-designing, re-branding, coming up with taglines, etc. it’s your job to make it memorableQuotes“Targeting lighthouse and strategic accounts is different than targeting the mid-market. [I’m a] big fan of ABM, but my take on ABM is there are different levels of ABM…If you're trying to build your business rapidly, and you're also trying to grab some portion of market share in a specific market, you need to do 10 times as much ABM as you're currently doing in order to really grow at scale.”“In a B2B business, it becomes important that every potential brand, whether or not they're a potential customer today–they could be a potential customer tomorrow or a potential customer 36 months from now–is aware of [your] brand. And the only way to really do that is to make sure that the brand is getting in front of as many people as often as possible without annoying them along the way.”“One of our biggest challenges globally is how do we keep the brand fresh? I’m a big fan of having large PR teams that are able to help a company expand pretty rapidly in a specific market…My experience has always been that the best way to grow a global brand is to grow it with leaders on the ground in those spaces and in those markets.”“My take on PPC is different than a lot of other marketers in the B2B space. A lot of other marketers in the B2B space would simply say to you, ‘what's the return on investment for the amount of money we spend on our pay per click ads?’ The truth is if you just look at stuff like that, then you would probably stop spending money on PPC ads. What it really comes down to is brand recognition. You want people to see your brand and think about your brand…a large portion of our PPC budget is really just billboarding. It's providing us a significant amount of brand recognition, which you need to do time and time and time again in order to really build a growth brand in the B2B space in a lot of the markets that we're in.”“My personal thing is to always try to make things memorable. If you don't try to make things memorable, then you’re not doing your job as a marketer. And when you look at a bunch of the B2B brands in the marketplace, how many of those would you consider to be memorable?”SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.LinksFollow Ian on TwitterFollow Dave on Twitterhttps://clevertap.com/

This episode features an interview with Len Fischer, Senior Vice President of Demand Generation at Okta.Len leads the team responsible for creating and accelerating Okta’s pipeline through campaign management, field marketing, partner marketing, and digital marketing efforts. Prior to Okta, Len was Executive VP of Marketing at BDNA, and held key leadership roles in marketing and sales at Informatica. He holds an MBA from Pepperdine University. On this episode, Len shares how he and his team at Okta strive to be different, how his demand gen strategy changes over time, the person who he says can get him fired the quickest, and some of the most clever and interesting demand gen initiatives he’s seen. Key TakeawaysPush the envelope on innovation with campaigns and demand gen initiativesIn SAAS, if you’re not focusing on customer marketing, customer success, and customer programs, you’re not going to be in business for long Remember that sales is marketing’s customer, and in demand gen, the Head of Sales can probably get you fired faster than anyone else canQuotes“There's a big portion of my demand strategy that will change over time as the company evolves and changes. You have to be able to partner with not only sales, but the other functions within marketing in order to be effective. Think about demand over personalization, digitalization, and integration, and if those three themes carry through, you'll have a successful demand motion.”“The person that can get me fired the quickest is the Head of Sales. So if the Head of Sales does not think I'm doing the job, regardless of if [the CMO] thinks I'm doing the job, that's the quickest way for me to get fired.”“Not everything in marketing will work. That's the other thing that I've learned over the years. And what doesn't work typically will teach you more lessons than what does work. So as long as you're willing to think about why it didn't work and what kind of changes you would do next time, I think there's value in it, regardless of how much pipeline you get.”“I'm a big believer that these experiential things really work, but I would rather do a few of them and go to the big events–go to the Final Four, go to The Masters…We want to be different, so if everybody has access to a Laker game or a Warriors game or a Giants game, then what difference is it? But if we're going to the World Series, then sure, let's talk about it.”“Fight for your team because they'll fight for you…Bring the right people in and set them up for success. This is a very collaborative position and you have to work with a lot of different people, but ultimately I think if you bring the right people in and you set them up properly, [and] you fight for them with the rest of the organization on what we can do and what we can't do, it typically will work in your favor.”SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.LinksLeukemia and Lymphoma SocietyFollow Ian on TwitterOkta.com