The Exit Five CMO Podcast (Hosted by Dave Gerhardt)

Paul Roetzer, Founder and CEO of the Marketing AI Institute, discusses the potential of AI in B2B marketing and shares practical applications of AI tools. The conversation covers building an audience, the emergence of new AI technologies, and the future impact of AI in marketing and business.

Alex Minor, a podcast producer and video marketing strategist, shares insights on mastering short-form video and social media. Topics include the importance of first impressions, misconceptions about video for businesses, effective video strategies, scriptwriting techniques, overcoming 'expert blindness,' workflow management, the power of a compelling opening hook, ideal length for short-form scripts, recording techniques, practice and memorization, and filming and editing times.

Dave is joined by Hillary Carpio, Head of ABM at Snowflake for a deep dive on account-based marketing. Hillary runs a 20 person team focused on ABM at Snowflake today an she's also the author of the book "Busting Silos: How Snowflake Unites Sales & Marketing To Win Its Best Customers."Hillary discusses how Snowflake has built an "account-based organization", ABM vs. Demand Generation, how to measure ABM, what an effective ABM campaign looks like, creating a tiered ABM strategy, how marketing exists to support sales at Snowflake and why it works, how tools like ChatGPT can help ABM marketers today. Send guest pitches and ideas to hi@exitfive.comJoin the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletterCheck out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership***Today’s episode is brought to you by Walnut.Why are we pouring all this effort into marketing just to push buyers to a “request a demo” or “contact sales” button?Come on, today’s buyers don’t want to talk to sales right away. They want to explore your product themselves, see how it works, and understand its value before booking a meeting.That’s where Walnut comes in.Walnut empowers marketers and GTM teams to create interactive, self-guided product experiences in minutes. Embed these experiences on your site, in emails, or anywhere in your funnel to let buyers engage on their terms, from awareness to close and beyond. That's the beauty of Walnut - you're getting a platform that your sales and CS colleagues can use to showcase the product too.And the best part? You get real intent data—see which features prospects love, where they drop off, and what’s actually driving pipeline. Demo Qualified Leads are the new MQL.Over 500 companies, like Adobe and NetApp, use Walnut to drive 2-3x higher website conversion rates and 7 figures in pipeline on a yearly basis. So do you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product instead of hiding it behind another typical B2B CTA? Go check out Walnut.io. And if you tell them Dave from Exit 5 sent you, they'll build out your first demo for free!

Kipp Bodnar, CMO at HubSpot, discusses his journey from managing the HubSpot blog to CMO. Topics include the evolution of HubSpot's marketing, reducing friction for customers, strategies for growing website traffic, and the perspective of marketers as craftspeople.

Ian Faison is Founder and CEO at Caspian Studios. Caspian Studios manages 60+ podcasts and video series in a variety of industries and Ian hosts Remarkable, Demand Gen Visionaries, Often Imitated, CIO Classified, and Rise of RevOps. He's an Oakland native, former Army Captain, and West Point graduate and Co-founder of Mission.org and co-founder of VETCON. Ian joins Dave to talk about podcasting for B2B. Can it work? How do you think about ROI?Ian also shares some of the behind the scenes from a recent show they created called Murder in HR - a narrative fiction podcast they created for the B2B SaaS brand Gympass - which reached #1 on the fictions charts in Apple podcasts and has over 1M listeners to date. Send guest pitches and ideas to hi@exitfive.comJoin the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletterCheck out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership***Today’s episode is brought to you by Walnut.Why are we pouring all this effort into marketing just to push buyers to a “request a demo” or “contact sales” button?Come on, today’s buyers don’t want to talk to sales right away. They want to explore your product themselves, see how it works, and understand its value before booking a meeting.That’s where Walnut comes in.Walnut empowers marketers and GTM teams to create interactive, self-guided product experiences in minutes. Embed these experiences on your site, in emails, or anywhere in your funnel to let buyers engage on their terms, from awareness to close and beyond. That's the beauty of Walnut - you're getting a platform that your sales and CS colleagues can use to showcase the product too.And the best part? You get real intent data—see which features prospects love, where they drop off, and what’s actually driving pipeline. Demo Qualified Leads are the new MQL.Over 500 companies, like Adobe and NetApp, use Walnut to drive 2-3x higher website conversion rates and 7 figures in pipeline on a yearly basis. So do you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product instead of hiding it behind another typical B2B CTA? Go check out Walnut.io. And if you tell them Dave from Exit 5 sent you, they'll build out your first demo for free!

Carly Moulton and Adam O'Donnell discuss B2B community building. They explore nurturing community without being salesy, finding the right audience, and the role of community within organizations. They also share insights on inspiring self-sustaining activity and the challenges of podcast growth for early-stage companies. Enjoy their conversation on B2B marketing community tactics!

John Short, CEO of Compound Growth, joins Dave to discuss topics such as shifting from solopreneurship to building a business, effective team management, what makes a great VP of Marketing in SaaS, and the nuances of working in a middle manager position. They also touch on the power of goal setting in marketing and the impact of daily writing on communication.

This episode of the podcast explores content operations and how it influences content marketing strategies. They discuss optimizing content for search engine results, distribution strategies, measuring content performance, and treating content as a product. They also highlight the importance of building strong relationships between creative people and marketing ops, and provide advice for marketers on embracing curiosity and a journalistic mindset.

Amrita Mathur, VP Marketing at ClickUp, discusses starting a new role as VP of Marketing, personal LinkedIn strategy, optimizing for learning in your career, and figuring out product market fit.

Dan Murphy, newly minted COO of Exit Five, joins Dave Gerhardt to discuss the exciting future of the business. They reflect on their time together at Drift and Privy, emphasizing the culture of speed and 'marketable moments' that drive the business. They explore the misconception of excelling as an individual contributor versus a VP in marketing and discuss the challenges and importance of leadership in a B2B marketing business.