Pipeline Visionaries

This episode features an interview with Josh Todd, CMO of Mindbody, the leading technology platform for the wellness industry.Josh is a two-time CMO with 20 years of strategic and tactical experience in key marketing leadership positions, including eight years at Constant Contact, where he led an aggressive customer-acquisition strategy that propelled the company from 50,000 to more than 600,000 customers.On this episode, Josh discusses how he’s structured his marketing organization to serve the unique blend of Mindbody’s B2B and B2C product offerings, and the challenge of building a website that serves both sides of the market.Key TakeawaysLess is more with your website copy. It’s more difficult to nail it, but if done correctly, the influence is huge.By making your marketing more simplistic internally, you’ll get more ideas from people who aren’t typically in marketing.The saying, “Everybody thinks they’re a marketer,” doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. The more ideas the better.Quotes“What we've really focused on is hiring marketers who truly understand what the one-to-one personal touch looks like. And I mean, they are just great at going in and understanding, ‘what do they care about? What do they like? How do I find a creative way to break through that's aligned with our vision, our messaging for how we can support them, and then having that directly connected to the sales team so that they are talking the same language.’” “There are three ways for us to [market] everything we do. There's inception marketing, where we're laying that groundwork. It's thought leadership — we're showing up in your trusted publications, and we're incepting this idea of Mindbody and what we can do. There’s flow, where we’re showing up where you are, whether it's answering a question in search or showing up to an event that you're already at. And then finally there's interruption, where you weren't really looking for us. Some of our advertising falls into that area, but what we're trying to do with these strategic accounts is just get in flow with them. Go where they are. Remove any barriers and any resistance. And then we can have a conversation about how we can help their business.” “We try to keep things as simple as possible. We look at that buyer's journey: Awareness, interest, desire, and action. It may feel old. It may feel too simplistic, but what it does is it creates a common language for the marketing org and the rest of the org. If we orient it to the customer journey, if we keep what we're trying to do simple and straightforward, we can actually stay out of our own way. We can bring the org in and now you start getting ideas from all other places, because you've made a kind of marketing theory, if you want to call that, accessible.” “There are a lot of hard parts in marketing, but one is: everybody feels like they’re a marketer. But like anything, the closer you get to it, the more you understand. This is a science, this is an art. Every little part of it is super complex. So the more we can simplify that and broaden the conversation, we feel like the more smart people we can get engaging and coming up with great ideas.”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.LinksHidden Brain PodcastMindbody’s websiteFollow Josh on TwitterConnect with Josh on LinkedInFollow Ian on TwitterConnect with Ian on LinkedInwww.caspianstudios.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This episode features an interview with Jim Sinai, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Procore Technologies, a global cloud-based construction software company that recently went public at an approximate valuation of $9B. Prior to Procore, Jim held numerous senior leadership roles across 8 years at Salesforce, including leading the launch for major product rollouts of Salesforce Platform and Salesforce Einstein. On this episode, Jim unpacks the intersection between product marketing and demand gen, the hardest challenge facing modern marketers, the future of webinars, and much more.Key TakeawaysEvery product marketer must think like a CMO. Messaging is important, but messaging for an entire audience is more important.Whenever you have a disagreement, the answer is not going to be found inside the four walls of the building, it's outside with the customer.If you're a CMO and you're not willing to learn how the demand gen systems work, you're not going to be CMO for very long.Quotes“The best demand gen leaders out there can do product marketing. I've seen them do product marketing, and they all have the same attributes in common, which are stakeholder management and alignment. At the end of the day, what makes for great campaigns and great demand gen is when you have the sales team and the marketing team focusing on trying to say the right message to the right people.” “All good campaigns are really just about trying to get eyeballs back to your website where you're trying to convert things. We have this mantra at Procore in our marketing team that the website is our most important asset. And we put all of our attention to make sure that we have all of our merchandising on the website.” “Just think about how your buyers are humans and they want a really delightful experience on the website. [Maybe] that's integrating a chatbot...One of the things that I think is fantastic is when you don't have to talk to a salesperson to book a meeting with the salesperson. I want to talk to sales and I want to talk to them either now via chat or I want to pick up the phone. Giving the shopper that channel is really important.”“Whenever you have a disagreement, the answer is not inside the four walls of the building, it's out with the customer. So the person who has tested it the most is the person who will likely have the winning argument in a dust-up.” “If you're a CMO and you're not willing to learn how the demand systems work, you're not going to be CMO for long, unless you have a phenomenal demand gen visionary as your right hand..” 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.LinksWorld of Concrete ConferenceProcore is hiring! Follow Jim on TwitterConnect with Jim on LinkedInFollow Ian on TwitterConnect with Ian on LinkedInwww.caspianstudios.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This episode features an interview with Jay Lee, CMO at Avalara, a leading provider of tax compliance automation software valued at $13B.Jay is a two-time CMO with more than 20 years of experience developing high-performing marketing teams, and previously held leadership roles at GE, American Express, and PayPal.In this episode, Jay walks us through the ins and outs of partner marketing, growing site traffic, content strategy, and the key learnings that he and the marketing team at Avalara are reflecting on post-pandemic.Key TakeawaysIf your company is in a rapidly changing industry, treat your website as an online newspaper. Keep your users up-to-date on what’s changing in your industry so your site is the go-to site.Always have backup marketing channels at the ready. You never know when the next curveball will be thrown your way.CMOs that don’t have the numbers on their side are in deep trouble. Metrics are your best and worst enemy. Quotes“We are always trying to get a sense of what the spend is and then what the return is. In B2B, it's all about what kind of leads you are creating and all the different programs that you have and what kind of pipeline you're generating for sales.”“A recommendation from a partner, ‘hey, you should use Avalara to manage your tax compliance in our system,’ that's enormous. We do a lot of direct marketing ourselves. But it's always better to have that trusted advisor or a system that you're already using to endorse us because you know that it's going to work and that’s what really matters.” “COVID happened in March and immediately the whole events industry shut down. That was a whole channel for us. It just went dark. If you're thinking about a multichannel approach to go to market and one of the main ones to your target audience gets shut off — what are you going to do? What we did was we leaned into all the other channels. We put up a bunch of webinars and started to get ourselves into the virtual world.” “What's so great about marketing versus any other part of the company is it's where you're actually supposed to test a ton of stuff. So there really isn't any bad marketing campaign. Just as long as it doesn't cause any reputational issues or do anything that’s too strange.” “Marketing should never say this: ‘We tried that and it didn't work.’ Because the world is always different today than it was yesterday. And circumstances have changed. Testing is always a part of the budget that people should make sure that they have.”  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. LinksAvalara Crush Virtual EventHidden Brain podcastJay's LinkedinJay’s TwitterFollow Ian on TwitterConnect with Ian on LinkedInwww.caspianstudios.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Key TakeawaysDon’t sweat the numbers, sweat the quality.All B2B marketing teams should consider hiring a great demand gen person that knows Google ad words as an early hire.To make an event that drives pipeline, you must define your audience as narrowly as possible.Quotes“To make an event that drives pipeline, I think the most important thing is to define your audience as narrowly as possible. If you were to say ‘this is going to be an event tailored for X kind of person,’ that's probably not enough. It's got to be X kind of person that works on Y kind of systems that is really concerned about Z kind of things. You really need to get as tailored as you can.” “Getting a great demand gen person that knows Google ad words like the back of their hand should be an early hire for any marketing team that’s doing B2B marketing.”“Something that we’ve done really well at Datadog: once we find a formula that works—even if it’s at a very small scale—then the challenge on us as a marketing team is to figure out how to keep repeating it or doing it in a bigger way until we hit a ceiling where you can’t do any more of it.”“I think if you were to take a look under the covers, we really do marketing by a thousand cuts. We have a lot of campaigns that do really small numbers, but they’re good numbers or the quality on them is good. So we keep on layering more small campaigns...and that’s how we end up delivering a very good set of leads for our sales team.”“The worst thing you can do is keep on trying to push something that's just not working up the hill and expending effort on it. Because there might be a lot of other campaigns that actually will work. And the effort that you're putting on this thing that you can't ever seem to get to work might be better spent in other places.”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 Alex on TwitterFollow Alex on LinkedInDatadog is hiring! Follow Ian on TwitterConnect with Ian on LinkedInwww.caspianstudios.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.