This episode features an interview with Emily Campbell, CMO at Blackline, a leading provider of cloud software that automates and controls critical accounting processes.In this episode, Emily discusses their shift to lifecycle marketing and her focus on doing fewer things better to drive efficiency. She also dives into her approach to experimentation, and how she’s allocating 50% of her budget to experiments as a way to future proof their organization. Key Takeaways:It’s important to understand how the customer behaves at each stage of the buying journey and to build lifecycle campaigns accordingly. A connected content strategy that builds on itself is an important component of lifecycle campaigns and streamlines retargeting efforts. Experiments are a way to future-proof the marketing organization, and pushes the team to try new ideas and to take calculated risks. Quote:  “It's probably more like 50 percent of our budget is for experiments this year. I really think about that as an investment in future-proofing our marketing organization. And I want to make sure that the team doesn't get super comfortable in what they're doing. So, I think that innovation really helps push them outside of their comfort zones. But I think we need to be testing new ideas. We need to be taking the, I'll say, calculated risks. We don't want to be throwing money away, but we need to learn what works and what doesn't. And, you know, one of the things that I'm trying to bring to the team is a sense of, we're going to celebrate successes and failures because those failures provide as much learning as the successes, if not more. And so we are very focused on fail fast, learn fast, try more. And, again, still fewer things better, but try new things that we haven't had a lot of experience with in the past.” Episode Timestamps:*(02:27) The Trust Tree: Lifecycle campaigns and understanding customer behavior*(12:11) The Playbook: Relevant content at the top of the funnel*(33:43 ) The Dust Up: Competitors that advertise on your key terms *(35:35) Quick Hits: Emily’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Emily on LinkedInLearn more about BlacklineLearn more about Caspian StudiosBlackline Customer Look Book

This episode features an interview with John Schneider, CMO at Betterworks, a performance management solution HR professionals rely on for increasing employee engagement, manager efficiency, and business impact.In this episode, John shares insights into how he transformed Betterworks' content strategy to cut lead costs by 65% and why establishing a trusted sub-brand has been crucial to their success. He also talks about the importance of strategic experimentation and understanding the multidimensional levers in marketing. Key Takeaways:By focusing on a content-first approach rather than paid-only channels, you can significantly reduce lead acquisition costs. BetterWorks achieved a 65% reduction in cost per lead over John’s time as CMO for the company.There are benefits to building a sub-brand to house content that resonates with your audience. It can help differentiate the company and attract significantly higher engagement. Strong content can engage the full buying committee across personas. Making quality, accessible thought leadership content engages a company at multiple touchpoints, resulting in an easier sales process. Quote: “You have to realize in marketing, you are absolutely not playing checkers. You're playing chess and you're probably playing some multidimensional version of chess. And you can't expect immediate results from everything you do. If it was easy to do what you're going to go do, they would not have hired you because the former person would still be there. And all those things have probably been tried in different capacities. And what is really important is to balance the tension between taking action but also doing it in a quality way and with some strategic foresight. And that's where the experimentation really comes in, understanding the scenarios and the outcomes. It's good to experiment and it's okay not to know what the outcome will be, but you need to know which lever you're pulling or you're not going to have a result that you can then fix against.”Episode Timestamps: *(04:12) The Trust Tree: Auditing when you step into a new role *(23:23) The Playbook: Content as the lifeblood, shared through a sub-brand*(35:37) The Dust-Up: Having a say in pricing and packaging *(38:37) Quick Hits: John’s Quick Hits   Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com. Qualified helps you turn your website into a pipeline generation machine with PipelineAI. Engage and convert your most valuable website visitors with live chat, chatbots, meeting scheduling, intent data, and Piper, your AI SDR. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with John on LinkedInLearn more about BetterworksLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Shannon Duffy, CMO at Asana, the enterprise work management platform that connects company-wide goals, strategic initiatives, and the execution of work in one place.In this episode, Shannon discusses their evolution from product-led growth to targeting enterprise clients, and the challenges and successes of expanding up market. She also shares her thoughts on thinking beyond the data.Key Takeaways:While data-driven decisions are critical, marketers should trust their intuition when the data isn’t conclusive or when exploring new market directions. This flexibility allows for creativity and risk-taking, especially when data lags behind rapid market changes or emerging client needs.Moving from product-led growth to targeting enterprise clients isn’t just about scaling product features; it demands a shift in how marketing teams understand customer pain points. It’s essential to align messaging to resonate with decision-makers who prioritize company-wide impact and long-term strategic value.Personalized outreach can make a significant difference, but it can be a challenge to create campaigns that feel personalized yet can scale across multiple accounts. Achieving this balance helps each client feel uniquely addressed without overloading marketing resources.Quote: “I do think a lot of PLG companies have a lot of data and so that's good in a lot of ways because the data can help guide you. Everyone's like, yeah, no kidding, Shannon. The flip side of that though is, sometimes the data can't tell you everything. And that's when, if you've been doing enterprise marketing for a long time, or you have a background there, there is some pattern matching that needs to be layered over the data, if that makes sense. Like there are certain things that work, and so how do you take the data to guide you, but you don't wait for the data to tell you everything when you know there are tried and true things that work? For example, Asana now has a live in person event. Asana had never done that before, and there was no data I could point to that says, yes, this event will be successful. There just wasn't. So a little bit of it was like a trust fall of pattern matching of enterprise software selling, enterprise software marketing, being like, this will work. It will start small and we will build. And we did. And so last year we did our first event ever, had 150 people. This year we're doing it in New York. We're going to have a thousand, right? Like those are the things that like the data can't help you, so you need to be mindful of what the data will, but also trust sort of the enterprise marketing playbook for things that will make a big difference.”Episode Timestamps:*(02:43) The Trust Tree: Cultivating relationships with different personas *(29:44) The Playbook: Brand is the only thing that helps with both PLG and enterprise markets*(41:23) The Dust Up: Challenge your long-held assumptions*(43:45) Quick Hits: Shannon’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Shannon on LinkedInLearn more about AsanaLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Mary Wells, CMO at Cloudera, a software company that empowers organizations to transform complex data into clear and actionable insights. In this episode, Mary discusses her maniacal focus on strong foundations and operational efficiency, and how it allows her to experiment and take calculated risks. She also dives into her focus on simplified, consistent messaging and why CMOs need to tap into their inner CIO. Key Takeaways:Ruthlessly prioritizing foundations and operational excellence, especially with budgets, allows you to optimize, experiment, and take calculated risks. CMOs need to tap into the inner CIO. CMOs have a tech stack and their organization is an expensive line item for a company. Scaling back and leaning into data and reporting gives the CMO a seat at the table and insights into what their customers need. Mix matters to your audience. Do fewer things, but do them bigger and better, aligning behind one marketing strategy to find your customers where they are in the buyers’ journey.Quote:  ”The other strategy is what we're not doing and cutting down on the quantity. What we want to do are fewer things, but bigger and better. By breaking down these silos, we're able to do that, so that when I wake up on a Wednesday, like today, I don't have 50 marketing things happening today. Everybody in marketing now has one playbook and together we're making it happen. And with the strategy though, again, it's not just events, it's not just hands-on labs. Mix matters, and knowing where a prospect or a customer is in the buyer's journey lots of times helps me and the team gauge where we need to dial up and down. Sometimes it's video, sometimes it's a deep dive technical presentation, sometimes it's an event, digital, et cetera. And the idea is that mix matters based on the audience.” Episode Timestamps: *(05:37) The Trust Tree: Prioritizing operational excellence *(18:21) The Playbook: The value of comms*(35:10) The Dust Up: Practice the pause – different day, different person*(38:27): Quick Hits: Mary’s Quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Mary on LinkedInLearn more about ClouderaLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Mika Yamamoto, Chief Customer and Marketing Officer at Freshworks, a company that provides powerful, easy to use Customer service, IT, and CRM software.In this episode, Mika discusses surgically blending the physical and digital world, to create a campaign experience that sticks with prospects. She also talks about encouraging innovation from her team, tying marketing victory to sales’ success and focusing on customer over function. Key Takeaways:Blending the physical and digital world when creating campaigns can create more lasting impact and better returns.Allowing your team to divide and conquer different markets and functions allows people to specialize and be the best at what they do, an impossibility if they are doing too many things.Incorporating humanity and a recognition of the human on the other side, not only differentiates your marketing in a B2B space, it makes the whole job more enjoyableQuote: ”In terms of signals, what helps is that we have one operations function that works across all functions. There's traditionally been, marketing comes up and celebrates and says, “Woohoo, we did all this work, we’re green!” And then sales is saying, “Well, what the heck you can't claim victory because we haven't met our numbers. So how can you declare victory if we haven't met our numbers?” And so again, the construct that we have is we have one operations group in our organization, Freshworks. So, we have one dashboard that essentially ties together and we're still working on making those ties, but that ties together, marketing doesn't declare victory if sales can't. So, it's driving shared metrics in one dashboard versus this view of the world that is a marketing view, then a sales view then a product view. We want to drive one view, which is more customer focused versus functionally focused.”Episode Timestamps: *(08:24) The Trust Tree: Divide and conquer different markets *(24:12) The Playbook: Focus on demand capture *(39:20) The Dust Up: Assumptions about sellers and marketers*(42:49) Quick Hits: Mika’s Quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Mika on LinkedInLearn more about FreshworksLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Niki Hall, CMO at Five9, a company that provides cloud contact center solutions, facilitating billions of customer engagements annually for 2,500+ customers.In this episode, Niki discusses the role of a CMO as a business professional first, and how important it is for them to bring customer insights into the overall company strategy. She also dives into her approach to experimentation and enhancing authentic marketing with the customer voice. Key Takeaways:CMOs should see themselves as business professionals first, and marketing professionals second. As a business professional, they need to be honest about what is not going well, so while you need to highlight wins, you can’t focus too heavily on what is going well.CMO's need to bring out insights to inform strategy, anticipating future issues that could arise. It’s essential to use customer insights to inform overall business strategy.Experiments are important, and you can pilot and prove new ideas at a small scale for proof of concept. Leaders should invest in and encourage experimentation.Quote: “ Pilot, prove, scale. So, I always ask my team to try new things, pilot it, prove it at a smaller scale. Once we've proven it out, then let's scale it globally. So, I've always set aside money for experiments and encourage my leaders to do that.”Episode Timestamps: *(03:09) The Trust Tree: Having the right ingredients as a company *(14:02) The Playbook: Having a clear, differentiated message *(37:12) The Dust Up: Grounding in common understanding *(39:25) Quick Hits: Niki’s Quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Niki on LinkedInLearn more about Five9Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Karl Van den Bergh, CMO at Gigamon, a company that helps IT organizations better secure and manage their hybrid cloud infrastructure.In this episode, Karl talks about shifting from a lead-based model to a demand unit model, the impact of investing in brand when budgets are tight, and balancing awareness with demand. He also talks about his approach to content, creating something that stands out and that people either love or hate.Key Takeaways:Transitioning from a lead-based model to a demand unit model can better align with complex B2B buying processes because it allows for more accurate targeting of entire buying committees.Maintaining brand investments during economic downturns is a way to seize opportunity to win market share. Companies that continue to invest in brand awareness during tight budgets will emerge stronger when the market recovers.Leveraging humor in campaigns, and embracing that some people will love it and some will hate it, is more memorable and can have better results than content that blends in.Quote: “We said, look, I'd rather put something out there that people either love or hate, as long as it's done, again, it can't be offensive, but people love or hate. I'd rather have something that stands out than something that's bland that no one would object to. And sure enough, as I said, it way outperformed benchmark.”Episode Timestamps: *(04:30) The Trust Tree: Shifting from a lead-based model to a demand unit model *(20:26): The Playbook: Put out content people will love or hate *(38:06) The Dust-Up: Authentic Dialogue*(39:47) Quick Hits: Karl’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Karl on LinkedInLearn more about GigamonLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Allison Breeding, CMO, Apptio, an IBM Company that provides data insights that empower leaders to make smarter financial and operational decisions. In this episode, Allison talks about shifts that have stuck around post-covid, getting really clear on personas, and pushing the envelope through experimentation. Key Takeaways:It’s worth pushing the envelope and trying out-of-the-box approaches. If you’re not pushing the boundaries a little bit, you’re not trying hard enough. When the market is turbulent and shifting, you have to be able to adjust your value prop and positioning to endure. Apptio made a big shift into digital marketing during COVID. Then, when the market plunged after hitting a high, they were able to shift to allow for continued success. Focus groups, and feedback from partners, prospects and employees, can inform the direction that you need to go in and support your efforts to understand your value proposition. Quote: “We've been doing a lot of really fun kind of guerrilla, out of home concepts, outside of events. Getting our hands slapped every now and then, but that's okay. If we're not getting in trouble, we're not pushing the envelope enough. But yeah, we're kind of trying to own the spaces that people are kind of in the mindset of thinking about our product in. And so whether that's airports or outside of event venues, on taxi cabs, on trains, that sort of thing around the events that we're participating in.”Episode Timestamps:*(03:45) The Trust Tree: A bottom-up and top-down approach*(17:35) The Playbook: Spending money fast and utilizing events *(32:31): The Dust Up: Navigating the founders’ mentality*(34:58) Quick Hits: Allison’s Quick Hits  Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Allison on LinkedInLearn more about ApptioLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Dorian Kendal,  a former CMO and a multi-time marketing leader. Most recently, Dorian served as CMO at Netlify, a platform for developers to build highly-performant and dynamic websites, e-commerce stores and applications. In this episode, Dorian discusses his non-traditional path to the CMO role, his experience restructuring teams for an enterprise focus, and the value of partner programs. He shares his thoughts on why you should avoid checklist marketing. Key Takeaways:Moving from product-led growth to an enterprise focus requires more targeted, “surgical” campaigns.Evangelist and influencer programs can drive long-term pipeline growth more effectively than short-term, paid media strategies.Over-reliance on SEM (Search Engine Marketing) can stifle creativity and drain budgets without delivering proportional returns. Redirecting resources to SEO, community engagement, and innovative campaigns like events can offer better long-term ROI.Quote: “I'm very anti-checklist marketing, I call it, where you just have, every campaign you're like, here's the eight things we need to do, and you just check them off. Because it just sucks creativity out of the process. And I think that we oftentimes, instead of finding really unique ways to attract audiences and engage them, we sometimes just fall back on stuff. And search engine marketing, I've always felt it's been like the easiest thing for people to be like, you know, we're gonna do a campaign. Well, of course, what's our SEM budget? So I think sometimes just sucks creativity out of the process.”Episode Timestamps: *(03:59) The Trust Tree: Restructuring to target enterprise customers*(13:23) The Playbook: Investing in search optimization over search engine marketing *(35:45) Quick Hits: Dorian’s Quick Hits  Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Dorian on LinkedInLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Jason Ing, CMO at Gusto, a company that automates and simplifies payroll, benefits, and HR, while providing expert support. Jason was early on the ground at Xbox and Prime Video, playing pivotal roles in revolutionizing online gaming and digital media. Jason offers a behind-the-scenes look at marketing major shifts in entertainment consumption, like launching Netflix on Xbox and his role in getting Amazon fire sticks into our homes. He also dives into his current marketing strategy at Gusto.Key Takeaways:Everyone loves good content, and creative, entertaining content attracts and retains customers.Commitment and excitement about a long term vision can lead to groundbreaking success, even if others are skeptical initially.There is value in trying out unexpected or unconventional strategies, such as direct mail for Amazon Prime Video.Quote: “As it relates to Netflix, and streaming overall, this was during the years in which people were still getting Netflix by mail. That was what they were known as. But the technology was being built and the amount of Xboxes we had in living rooms in the U.S. households and across the world was at a point where these streaming providers could create a viable business by getting into all those living room spaces. And this was before TVs were all smart-TV-enabled. So, it was really cool to  see a vision for the future. And there was a bit of belief that you had to have around knowing that there was a better way. When you're fortunate enough to work for a company that is as successful as Microsoft was, and it's even more successful today, the company was willing to think long term. And I think that was really the first time in my career where I was exposed to this idea that you had to manage things on a day-to-day level and for the short term, but you had to have long-term vision and commitment to it. And I think all of us who were there, we were just very much bought into that idea, that there was just a future that was around the corner.”Episode Timestamps: *(29:09) The Trust Tree: Bringing elements from B2C to B2B*(34:58): The Playbook: Controlling the narrative through brand *(45:39): The Dust Up: Tension around partnership deals *(47:42): Quick Hits: Jason’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Jason on LinkedInLearn more about GustoLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Karen Budell, CMO, Totango + Catalyst. Totango and Catalyst recently joined forces to build a leading customer growth platform that helps businesses protect and grow revenue, providing businesses with a united platform that drives recurring revenue success and measurable growth.In this episode, Karen talks about leading a marketing team through a merge. She talks about the importance of customer success and investing in the full marketing “bowtie” to focus on retaining customers.Key Takeaways:Post-merger, marketing teams need to harmonize the brand and messaging, the product, the tech stacks and more. While this is a challenging process, it allows you to take the best from each company and present a unified brand that fosters trust. Start with outcome-based conversations when talking to prospects to make sure you understand their objectives before you complete the sale. Your customers’ success is your success. Don’t just invest in the marketing funnel. Invest in the full marketing “bowtie”. Retaining and growing current customers is very important. Quote: “We stood up a sales enablement and go-to-market enablement role and function within the marketing org. So reporting up to me, but a dotted line to the CRO’s organization. And part of the reason that I thought that that was a great fit and was so successful was because you really want to make sure that your frontline team understands who your target audience is and what your galvanizing story and narrative is all about. So, being close to the marketing team that was working on that messaging and positioning and the programs and events really helped create a nice bridge and reinforce the partnership that we had with our sales team.”Episode Timestamps: *(4:18) The Trust Tree: Outcome-based conversations with customers *(16:02) The Playbook: Updating the website post-merger*(33:24) The Dust-Up: CMOs that come from a brand focus*(39:59) Quick Hits: Karen’s quick hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with on Karen Budell on LinkedInLearn more about Totango + CatalystLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with  Laura Beussman, Senior Vice President of Marketing at CallRail, an intelligence platform that helps businesses track and attribute each lead to their marketing journey and use real-time insights to optimize their marketing. In this episode, Laura discusses their marketing strategy as a pure-play PLG where marketing generates all the leads, and how they reach prospects through a sub-verticalized approach. She also shares how they are leveraging AI for better SEO results. Key Takeaways:A sub-verticalized approach can improve efficiency and return on investment, helping to ensure that you are accurately speaking to customer needs. Learn about the sub-verticals in your market.Leveraging AI in your content efforts can really improve your SEO results, by allowing you to create more content that is specifically catered to sub-verticals in the market.When marketing takes full responsibility for generating all leads, it eliminates the tension with sales by offering clarity, improving operational efficiency and allowing sales to focus on closing deals.Quote:“ One of the ways that the team is really capitalizing on AI is on SEO content. Again, as a PLG, SEO is very important for us. And with those verticalized go-to-market strategies, we needed to create a high volume of content to support not just the verticals, but the sub verticals. So, we have developed a strategy on creating that SEO content that leverages AI. Now, it's not that the AI writes the content from top to bottom with no human assistance, but what we do is we educate the AI tools on our content guidelines. We create a robust draft of an outline. AI then converts that into an article. Our content team edits, and makes sure it's reflective of our brand and our voice before we publish. What we've been able to do with that, though, is triple the amount of SEO content we're able to produce. And what that means is that we're able to be really hyper targeted, really hyper verticalized, and we're actually ranking better. And it's not that we're ranking better because the articles are significantly better. It's because they are able to be more specific, because they are able to be more targeted and sub verticalized. That allows them to rank better as well.”Episode Timestamps:*(03:34) The Trust Tree: Operating in a marketing-led lead generation model *(17:25) The Playbook: Using hyper-targeted content to boost visibility and conversion rates*(36:14) The Dust-Up: Making sure sales feels supported by marketing *(39:08) Quick Hits: Laura’s Quick Hits  Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Laura on LinkedInLearn more about CallRailLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Prachi Gore, SVP of Marketing, Checkr, Inc., a company that makes background checks faster, easier, and more compliant. In this episode, Prachi shares how they balance marketing to both the SMB and enterprise markets, and discusses her approach to reach each group of prospects. She also emphasizes the importance of investing in brand, and talks about how her revenue team is focused on “push marketing”.Key Takeaways:Be strategic about how you target different customers. Prachi has distinct approaches for SMB and enterprise markets, —focusing on brand advertising for SMBs while leveraging thought leadership and compliance content for enterprises.It is worth investing in customer lifecycle and partner marketing to improve customer retention and expand market reach. Customer lifecycle marketing is especially crucial in businesses with a transactional model.A robust inbound marketing strategy, supported by comprehensive brand awareness efforts, is vital for capturing latent demand and nurturing leads, even when brand investment feels like a riskier bet. Quote: “I think brand campaigns are always a bet. You're taking a risk of placing a bet on something that may or may not work. It's not measurable. It's hard, really, really hard to measure. And so it's kind of like, you’ve got to jump in with two feet and you'll float. But I think that that makes it hard for us as marketers to say like, hey, you're just like two million or five or whatever is your number, I'm going to put this towards a test and let's see what works, what doesn't work. Versus anything else, even we talked a lot about content syndication, but anything else like search, demand, events, campaigns, everything can be tied back to, it produces so much pipeline, exactly how much, you know. So, it just makes taking those bets, experiments, faster, easier, and at lower risk. Brand is hard, and then it also needs a philosophical alignment with your CFO, with your CEO your board, like everyone needs to be on board to help place those bets with you.”Episode Timestamps: *(02:10) The Trust Tree: Marketing to SMB and enterprise markets*(12:19) The Playbook: Hitting both parts of the business through search *(33:13) The Dust Up: Turning the BDR program around *(35:15) Quick Hits: Prach’s Quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Prachi on LinkedInLearn more about Checkr, Inc.Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Michael Freeman, VP of Marketing, Airbase, a procure-to-pay solution that simplifies purchasing.In this episode, Michael discusses smart SEO strategy and the importance of investing in the distribution of your content. He also talks about how, while marketers are incentivized to demonstrate that they are generating pipeline, they still have to pursue the high ROI tactics that are difficult to measure and predict. Key Takeaways:If you create content, customers will not just come; they may never even find it. SEO is a core ingredient from the start, not an afterthought, and you need to find people with the language they use, understanding their intent. Marketers are charged with generating pipeline and proving it, but they need to avoid neglecting high ROI tactics that may be difficult to quantify or predict. Don’t just feed the content beast; make sure you are creating quality content purpose that has a genuine impact on your audiences. Quote: “I've been at a lot of companies where there was just a mentality of feed the beast on the blog. And we don't do that here. Every post has a specific objective and purpose that we're trying to meet. Sometimes there's just some corporate brand stuff we need sales to be able to point to or use for other purposes, but 95, 96 percent of what we publish has a specific objective and purpose from a traffic or leads perspective. And we've done the research upfront to say, yes, we have a reasonable chance to achieve that objective before we commit the resources on that piece of content.”Episode Timestamps: *(04:14) The Trust Tree: Be smart about paid search *(18:59) The Playbook: SEO and good content strategy *(48:43) The Dust Up: Inheriting a bad website *(51:11) Quick Hits: Michael’s Quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Michael on LinkedInLearn more about AirbaseLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Lisa Bennett, CMO at Kaltura, a company that provides live and on-demand video SaaS solutions to thousands of organizations around the world, engaging hundreds of millions of viewers.In this episode, Lisa talks about the new world of repurposing your content and how marketers can improve their content strategy and outcome measurement. She also talks about how she thinks about “brandformance” and ensuring that you are walking the walk, as a marketer.Key Takeaways:It’s easier than ever to repurpose your content across channels, maximizing its impact. Marketers should be thinking about this, instead of just constantly generating new content without thinking critically about its delivery and impact. You can focus on “brandformance”, brand and performance marketing, even without a huge budget. To do so, you need to collaborate with the c-suite to determine the best go-to-market strategy. Marketing is constantly changing and the new norms are not set. It’s a new world, in a lot of ways, and we will have to find these new ways of marketing. Quote: “It feels as if, to a degree, we're generating content and not necessarily measuring it well enough. And then moving on to the next piece of content, and the next piece of content, and the next webinar, and the next event, and the next thing. And there's so much that actually can be repurposed, which is definitely becoming a trend now with AI because it's so easy to do. So, maybe before people didn't repurpose content as much, and video especially, because it was complex. It wasn't so easy to do. But now, you take a tool like Kaltura, not only have your event or your webinar, and then repurpose it, put it into social, put it into blog posts, put it into whatever you need and get all the data on it. So, that's an example of kind of this new world that we're looking at.”Episode Timestamps: *(04:22) The Trust Tree: Brandformance and strategizing with the executive team*(18:05) The Playbook: Maximizing the impact of events by repurposing content *(29:35) The Dust Up: Communicating and having a partner in crime*(32:09) Quick Hits: Lisa’s quick hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Lisa Bennett on LinkedInLearn more about KalturaLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Heidi Bullock, CMO at Tealium, a customer data platform that connects customer data across web, mobile, offline, and IoT so businesses can better connect with their customers.In this episode, Heidi highlights the essential role of brand in B2B marketing and the effectiveness of the pod structure in marketing organizations. She also dives into the need for marketers to be proactive and come to the table with a point of view.Key Takeaways:In a competitive market, it is all about creating preference, and you do that through your brand. B2B marketers need to invest in the brand.Marketing needs to come into conversations with sales with a point of view and they need to do their homework. They can’t just wait to be told what to do.Everything runs more smoothly if you consolidate signals and create summaries of intent.Quote: Marketing can't be the order taker. It really has to be the salesperson that's the quarterback, but marketing has to come in with a point of view. Like, hey, you're talking to a lot of people in the pharma space, let's make sure that we're doing X, Y, and Z. We've got this amazing workshop. We have this great piece of content. Come in with a viewpoint versus like, hey, just wait and have somebody tell me what to do. Everything goes better if you can consolidate signals, and then the marketer has a strong point of view and does their homework.Episode Timestamps: *(02:50) The Trust Tree: The benefits of a pod structure*(18:00) The Playbook: Reducing the friction*(38:30) The Dust Up: Working with product teams, focusing on the user*(41:22) Quick Hits: Heidi’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Heidi on LinkedInLearn more about TealiumLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Cristy Garcia, CMO, impact.com, a partnership management platform that automates business partnerships, at scale.In this episode, Cristy shares the do’s and don'ts of marketing, and the primary reason for failed partnerships. She also discusses the evolution and importance of using influencers in marketing, and what it's like marketing to marketers.Key Takeaways:Influencers have been around for awhile, but they became even more important during the pandemic. If you aren’t working with influencers as a marketer, you’re being left behind. When partnerships fail, it is most often due to lack of communication. Make sure to be very clear about payments, expectations, and what you are promoting. You can generate significant revenue through partnerships, for some companies, as high as 28 percent of their total revenue.  Quote: “If you're not working with influencers right now as a marketer, you're left behind. This is happening now. The rise of influencers, they've been around for a long time, I spoke at mommy blogger conferences back in 2012, so it's not new. But what is new is sort of the heightened awareness and demand for influencer content. And I think it all happened around the pandemic when people were at home with their phones, creating social interaction, buying things online, and the influencers really took off.”Episode Timestamps:*(3:06) The Trust Tree: The rise of commerce content*(14:20) The Playbook: THe dos and don’ts of partnerships*(35:55) The Dust Up: Knowing your worth*(37:28) Quick Hits: Cristy’s quick hitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Cristy on LinkedInLearn more about impact.comLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Stephen Gold, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at SparkCognition (Previous), a company providing AI solutions that allow organizations to predict future outcomes, prescribe next actions, empower people, and protect assets. In this episode, Stephen discusses experimenting to find the best combination of elements to engage prospects through a long sales cycle. He also dives into the healthy tension between marketing and sales, and how he is thinking about using AI tools in his marketing. Key Takeaways:Experiment to find the right mix of tactics to engage with prospects and customers. Continue to test and tweak to find the right combination for your prospects and sales cycle. Use AI and other tools with a specific objective in mind; don’t get distracted by shiny new toys with little pragmatic use. Marketers will always be challenged to demonstrate their value to their organization. Even in smaller organizations, this takes a concerted effort and CMOs would be remiss to forget the importance of internal marketing. Quote: “There's always a question, the proverbial question that hangs over marketers heads, that says, am I really getting a return on my investment? Maybe we can cut the budget and we're not going to feel the effect. And marketing, unlike other areas of the business, it's probably harder to quantify the impact because it touches so many parts of the business. Marketers are constantly, or should constantly be thinking about, how do I demonstrate to my organization, qualitatively and quantitatively, the value we bring? We work really hard to produce content internally for consumption by other executive members, by the rank and file. Who doesn't want to work at a business where the brand matters? Who doesn't want to work at a business where they're doing social good? We're a small company, approaching 400, but it's still important that you get the word out. And it's not easy. You have to put a concerted effort to do that.”Episode Timestamps:*(6:20) The Trust Tree: The importance of education *(16:35) The Playbook: Finding the combination of tactics that work*(37:08) The Dust Up: Inviting friction between sales and marketing *(39:14) Quick Hits: Stephen’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Stephen on LinkedInLearn more about SparkCognitionLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Tom Wentworth, CMO at Recorded Future, the world’s largest threat intelligence company, working with over 1,600 businesses and government organizations across more than 74 countries.In this episode, Tom talks about building Recorded Future News, a separate P&L that has become one of the largest cyber intelligence news sites, and a trusted media entity that breaks important news in the cybersecurity/intelligence world.Key Takeaways:Brand building is not just about creating awareness, it is about building trust and building relationships. Sometimes, the only information you need to determine ROI is whether your clients and prospects feel your initiative provides them with value.A quick way to fail as a CMO is to run someone else’s playbook. Make sure that you understand the current company and context; create a bespoke plan. Quote:  “If you think about brand building, what most people do in cyber security, when they get to be Recorded Future size, we're about over 300 million in ARR, which makes us a pretty good sized company. What most companies our size do, is they go buy an F1 sponsorship, or they go put their logo on some sports team's jersey. And that's cool. That's a cool way to get in front of people, but I don't think it builds trust. Like, why would I trust this vendor just because their logo is on a jersey or their logo is on a car? That just tells me they’ve got a lot of money to spend. So we said, instead of going to do that, the way that we're going to build awareness for Recorded Future and build a relationship with our audience is through news and then through a podcast, which I'll talk about a little bit too. So that's our brand awareness investment. We feel very confident that people who fall in love with our news are also going to like our product. I don't have to prove it, in the sense that I don't have to have this super complicated attribution scheme. We just ask our clients and our prospects, ‘Hey, do you like Recorded Future News?’ And they love it. That's just about enough for us.”Episode Timestamps:*(04:22) The Trust Tree: Becoming a fan of account-based marketing *(25:34) The Playbook: Building Recorded Future News*(43:45) Quick Hits: Tom’s quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Tom on LinkedInLearn more about Recorded Future Learn more about Caspian Studios

In this episode, Eric shares with us how to effectively tailor marketing messaging, why it’s important to push the boundaries of content design, and leveraging tools like ChatGPT for brainstorming ideas. Eric also talks about why fighting pieces of collateral to get to the point is often done in vain and his approach to creating better content. Key Takeaways:Balance products and personas: You need to adeptly balance different products, verticals, and personas to create a cohesive marketing strategy. Segmenting your audience based on their product install base allows you to tailor your messaging and approach more effectively, fostering stronger connections and driving better results.Be innovative with design: Emphasize innovative and boundary-pushing design in your content. Think of new ways to deliver your message and make your content stand out from the competition. Creativity in design can significantly enhance your brand's appeal and memorability.AI is a tool - use it: Use tools like Chat GPT for brainstorming ideas. AI can help you generate creative concepts and refine your strategies, making your campaigns more dynamic and innovative.Quote: “I think the design is so important, and as someone who, I run the marketing team here, I'm personally probably on a lot of sales lists and distributions. I get hit up constantly by SDRs who are sending me things.  If it doesn't look good, I'm not going to open it. I don't really care what it is. Like I'm so busy drifting between emails and Slacks and meetings. And then, my personal life as well, that if it's not designed in a compelling, intuitive way, I'm not going to fight with a piece of collateral to get to the point. And so I think we have really tripled down on brand, visual identity, how the different pieces of our story come together…But when you're getting into thought leadership, I think the era of attaching a PDF or a static white paper, one pager, like those are so long gone. And I think in an industry that is a bit old school as well, I think standing out as a more dynamic marketing function where we're putting out pieces of collateral that not only does the user want to read the insight because the data we have is so unique to us, no one else is putting out content that looks like ours does.” Episode Timestamps: *(03:57) - Trust Tree: It’s all about balance*(16:20) - The Playbook: The data is the hook*(41:56) - The Dust Up: Approaching product launches thoughtfully*(44:02) - Eric’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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. Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Eric on LinkedInLearn more about VTSLearn more about Caspian Studios

In this episode, Chris dives into his go-to-market strategy at Wrike, and discusses how they are leveraging AI internally to become more efficient. He also discusses how their marketing strategy allows them to go after different types of companies within a very large market.  Key Takeaways:Efficiency in Performance Marketing: There is no time wasted on optimizing marketing budgets to ensure each dollar spent yields a satisfactory ROI.ABM: Your ABM tactics are increasingly important for targeting enterprise clients. Start by focusing on refining your org’s ICP and leveraging existing customer advocates to engage potential buyers effectively.Metrics and Measurement: It often comes down to data. Continuously monitoring key funnel metrics like lead quality, conversion rates, and cost per lead, to quickly identify and address issues and improve overall performance for your customers. Quote: “From a product perspective, we're looking at how do we leverage AI  to take, in some cases, a massive amount of data that sits in our system around work and tasks and projects and things that are happening and how to use AI to help people summarize a big thread of communication and collaboration that's happened over a period of time. And using AI to use natural language to create project plans rather than creating a project plan from scratch saying, hey, I have a project to do to launch this new product in this type of market. And here's what the product consists of. Build me a project plan and it can leverage data that exists both publicly for similar types of projects,  as well as within that customer's, set of historical projects. Like, how do you generate content that way, and then how do you use AI to predict risks on a project or how do you use AI to identify resources to staff on a project. So it's interesting: both our internal workers are using AI that's available to us to help us internally. And then we're also looking at our AI strategy from a product and innovation perspective and figuring out how do we make our system more powerful, more intelligent to automate some things, to help people, focus on more creative, human-centric work.” Episode Timestamps:*(03:28) - The Trust Tree: Land and expand*(12:47) - The Playbook: Chris’ uncuttables*(35:51) - The Dust Up: Defining your ICP company-wide*(39:06) - Chris' Quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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. Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Chris Mills on LinkedInLearn more about WrikeLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Alison Lindland, CMO at Movable Ink, a SaaS MarTech platform that empowers marketers with scalable, omni-channel personalization through data activation and AI decisioning. In this episode, Alison discusses the importance of a customer advisory board and of personally spending time with your customers. She also talks about the flywheel they have built through their unique strategy team and how they incorporate customer insights back into their content. Key Takeaways:It is worth investing in a customer advisory board and building a community there. The insights and feedback that you gain can be fed back into the company to improve the product and create authentic marketing. Movable Ink has built a unique strategy team, made up of former clients that interact closely with their senior clients and bring back insights to their teams. This team has become one of the most sought after resources in the company. Having the outbound function sit under the CMO bring them closer to other marketing functions and creates alignment. Quote:  ”I think you really can never spend too much time with your customers. So making sure that you are out there personally talking to your clients. I'd say is really just the number one piece and, I onboard every new member to our cab and it's a considerable investment of time, but it's my absolute favorite thing to do. And in every single conversation that I have, there's always some light bulb moment opportunity that comes out of it. Some piece of feedback that goes back to the account team. Some personal connection we didn't know we had.  It's just always something great or an opportunity for them to speak at Think Summit, just something terrific comes from it. So I'd say making sure that you're investing in building those relationships and just laying those tracks.”Episode Timestamps:*(09:16) The Trust Tree: ABM playbook as a team sport *(16: 53) The Playbook: THe value of a customer advisory board*(29:27) The Dust Up: Turning disappointment into a big opportunity  *(32:14) Quick Hits: Alison’s Quick hits  Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Alison on LinkedInLearn more about Movable InkLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Andy Raskin, Strategic Narrative Consultant, who aligns CEOs and their teams around a strategic narrative — to power success in sales, marketing, fundraising, product and recruiting.In this episode, Andy shares what a strategic narrative is, how CMOs should think about it, and how to get CEO-buy-in.Key Takeaways:Clarifying and developing your strategic narrative is a leadership level task that requires buy-in from the full executive team, and buy-in from the CEO is crucial. A successful strategic narrative transforms the act of buying into that of joining a movement. The process of developing a strategic narrative often reveals misalignment within leadership teams, even amongst teams who think they are on the same page. Quote: “I always start asking, okay, what are the pieces of this story? I’d say there's always, there's like a little bit of alignment, but almost every time there's, people are going in different directions, and very often I'll get, oh yeah, the CEO will say, yeah, me and the CMO or me and the CFO we're totally on the same page, like talking to the same person. And then I'll ask and it turns out quite different about how they want to talk about the company and build this narrative. So it's a very common thing, yes. When I send out a proposal, I used to say like strategic narrative creation or something like that, and I changed it to strategic narrative alignment. Because I really do think that, at the end of the day, that's the work.”Episode Timestamps: *(02:26) What is a strategic narrative? *(08:10) How should CMOs think about strategic narrative? *(16:52 ) How to get CEO buy-in *(40:15 ) Quick Hits: Andy’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Andy on LinkedInLearn more about Andy’s workLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Kelly Hopping, CMO at Demandbase, a go-to-market company for B2B brands. They help marketing and sales teams overcome the disruptive data and technology fragmentation that inhibits insight and forces them to spam prospects. In this episode, Kelly talks about her strategy to make sales love the marketing team and to collaborate with sales on their ABM strategy. She also discusses the ROI on retaining a customer, versus getting a new customer, and how the brand is really the full customer journey.  Key Takeaways:Account based marketing only works as a collaborative effort between sales and marketing. It’s marketing’s job to make the sales team love them, providing them with a brand they are proud to represent and high intent leads. The ROI on retaining a customer is much better than on getting a new customer. Taking great care of the customers is not just a sales or customer experience responsibility. Part of retaining customers is building brand loyalty by making sure customers love the product and building community. Quote:“ I have a general belief, I tell my team, my number one goal is to make sales love us. And that doesn't mean that we do all bottom of the funnel, like pipe create, but it means we're going to give them a brand that they're proud to represent. We're going to give them great air cover at events and through social. We're going to give them high-quality pipeline that has good intent. We're going to focus, so we're not going to try to boil the ocean. We're going to be laser-focused on an ICP and we're going to work together on conquering them. We're going to give them content that's usable versus like a thousand pieces and they have to sort through it. We're going to give them five pieces and a really clean bill of materials that they need to close the deal. And we're just gonna be really, really, really focused on those things. So, to me, that's ultimately the strategy is if sales is successful, then we've done our job right.”Episode Timestamps: *(3:53) The Trust Tree: Building sales and marketing alignment *(23:26) The Playbook: Your brand is the full customer journey *(34:41) The Dust Up: Tensions with sales and ensuring you send them good opportunities*(37:33) Quick Hits: Kelly’s Quick hitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Kelly on LinkedInLearn more about DemandbaseLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Katie Berg, VP of Marketing at Klue, an AI-powered Competitive Enablement platform designed to help product marketers collect, curate, and deliver actionable competitor insights to empower revenue teams to win more business.In this episode, Katie dives into all things content, discussing building high quality content for your core audience and avoiding the trap of trying to reach all audiences right away. She talks about the meaning of community and building authentic relationships.  Key Takeaways:You can’t reach every audience authentically through your content, at first. Trying to include too many personas at once results in general content that is not of interest to any of them. It’s difficult to create entertaining content and you don’t need to have a perfect launch. The discipline of constant iteration and learning is the path to excellence.Identity is a core component of community. Build a community that people want to identify with. Quote:  “I agree with you on the point that you don't have to have a perfect launch. And actually that's like a great, nice-to-have that comes from a bunch of different cycles and learnings of running shows. But the most important thing I think we ever did with our flagship podcast was we started it. If you went back and listened to those first episodes, I'm sure they were trash, but every single time we would listen to them. And we take down notes on what do we need to improve for next time? How do you ask better questions? How do we cut this better? How do we create better social clips? And literally just the pure discipline of constant iteration and constant learning, it is like the surest thing to getting to excellence.  It just requires the discipline of being open to learning and trying to improve a single inch every time.” Episode Timestamps: *(16:54) The Trust Tree: Strategy founded on content and education *(41:01) The Playbook: Media driving organic and direct pipeline *(46:06) Quick Hits: Katie’s Quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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. Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Katie on LinkedInLearn more about KlueLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Clare Dorrian, CMO at SugarCRM, a CRM that helps marketing, sales, and service teams finally get a clear picture of each customer’s journey. In this episode, Clare talks about gaining clarity on your strategy and ensuring that it is not based on conjecture, advising marketing leaders not to sacrifice data-backed decisions for speed. She also discusses the importance of investing in reputation management and her approach to content.Key Takeaways:You need to focus on profitable growth, and remaining both efficient and effective, especially as a lean marketing team.People buy from people, investing in events is very important, as is investing in reputation management.Don’t drive strategy based on conjecture; keep your team honest about goals and what needs to be done.Quote: “I think that this comes back to getting crafty when you are a lean, mean team. We think about big rock pieces of content…the way that we approach content is to break down those insights and map themes, topics that those insights have and will uncover, and we're in the middle of this right now, by the way this piece of research, into social media soundbites, webinars, into short form, long form, and multiple formats, and with a perspective that will resonate to each of our core buying groups. So that we get the most out of the research that we're doing. We're approaching content in a way where we're trying to uncover insights that we can then package in many, multiple ways to educate. When people are at the top of the funnel to reinforce that the challenge that they're having, or that we're expressing to us when they become a prospect is shared by many others and they are not alone,  but also into door openers for our sales team to give them reason to reach out, to give them reason to connect as well.”Episode Timestamps:*(06:53) The Trust Tree: Focusing on profitable growth as a private-equity-backed company*(15:25 ) The Playbook: The importance of investing in reputation management *(34:39) The Dust Up: Rebrand tensions and using your community to validate the right choice *(38:15) Quick Hits: Clare’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Clare on LinkedInLearn more about SugarCRMLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Kady Srinivasan, CMO at Lightspeed Commerce, a commerce platform that helps merchants innovate to simplify, scale and provide exceptional customer experiences. In this episode, Kady discusses the importance of understanding your segments so you can talk about the value proposition for each segment appropriately. She also dives into the process of determining where to play and how to win at Lightspeed Commerce.Key Takeaways:You need to understand your segments in order to ensure that you are talking appropriately about the value proposition for each segment. Go through the exercise of determining where to play in the market and how you can win there. Gain clarity regarding the choices that you are making and where you should say no. Position yourselves as a partner, instead of the provider of a product or service, when you are building your brand. Quote:“The short-term focus on the short-term ROI is a big problem. And then the second thing is like the unattributable spend and how to make the right business case for it. I'll say as a tee up to our budget masterclass, when we do it,  there are three segments of metrics that I've realized, uh, CFOs care about: there's volume, which is usually your MQL, SQL, closed one, you know, whatever that is, right? Then there is the velocity bucket, which is time to close, or time to first transaction, time to XYZ, whatever that is, time to first touch. And then the third one is efficiency. So it could be ROAS, it could be sales and marketing as a spend, as a percentage of spend. If you can convincingly present these three buckets  or the right kind of information in these three buckets, you get a lot of mileage out of your conversations.”Episode Timestamps: *(02:49) The Trust Tree: Leading the shift towards prioritizing higher value ICPs *(23:45) The Playbook: Managing brand building as CMO at different companies *(36:08) The Dust Up: The translation problem *(38:50) Quit Hits: Kady’s Quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Kady on LinkedInLearn more about Lightspeed Commerce Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Smita Wadhawan, CMO at SimplePractice, a leading practice management software company for health and wellness professionals.In this episode, Smita discusses the importance of keeping your customers at the center and incorporating their voice. She also dives into educating the customer about the value of your product and then showing up for them through that product.  Key Takeaways:Customer feedback should be taken very seriously and it is worth creating a formal process to give customers a chance to share their thoughts. It’s important to arm yourself with data and examples when trying to sell your ideas internally, or you won’t be able to push them through.The website can serve as your sales function and you should experiment with how the website can “work harder for you”.Quote: “So I would literally think of the marketing strategy as the full funnel from building the right product to getting the product in the hands of our customers, to making sure they use the product and get the most value out of it. And then last but not the least using our communications and our creative to tell the stories which put our customers front and center. We don't use models. We don't use actors. All our creative is telling authentic stories and they are all our customers. That is something that's really key to our brand, always honing in on our customer and having them do the storytelling for us.”Episode Timestamps:*(4:43) The Trust Tree: Fulfilling your obligation to your customers, who rely on your product*(15:42) The Playbook: Customer referrals as the largest source of acquisition*(34:45) The Dust Up: Advocating for staff to support conversion rates on the website*(38:03) Quick Hits: Smita’s Quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Smita on LinkedInLearn more about SimplePracticeLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Kristin Russel, CMO at symplr, a company that offers healthcare operations solutions, anchored in governance, risk management, and compliance.In this episode, Kristin talks about not only creating a category, but also creating roles for the people who work in that category, in an effort to organize their customers. She also discusses going to market with the human in mind and authentic marketing.  Key Takeaways:Creating a category involves driving brand recognition, but it also requires educating your customers and thinking about creating jobs within the category you are building. If you have a smaller budget, “brandquisition”, focusing on brand acquisition efforts with a very recognizable brand, can be a useful strategy.  Prioritize featuring real people on your website. Focus on creating content and going to market authentically with real people in mind. Quote: “When you think about creating a category, we're also thinking  about how do we create people who work in that category? How do I create a healthcare operations director or the manager of healthcare operations for workforce? And so, crazily enough, thinking about not just our content, but also working with our training team, working with the ways that we're reaching out and organizing our own customers.”Episode Timestamps:*(5:56) The Trust Tree: Going to market with the human in mind*(20:58) The Playbook: “Brandquisition” and SEO*(38:13) The Dust-up: Using the “Lencioni approach” to work through disagreementsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Kristin on LinkedInLearn more about symplrLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Shane Murphy-Reuter, CMO at Webflow, a company that offers non-coders the ability to design, build, and launch powerful websites. Shane discusses the importance of the website and the value of being able to build quickly without coding knowledge and without making sacrifices in quality. He also dives into the efficacy of paid and organic search investments and the niche media approach.    Key Takeaways:You should align your content strategy with how people consume content, which is in a more niche way.Invest in the conversion rate on your website. Can you support the people who come to your website? How much are you spending on traffic generation versus conversion rate optimization?Across marketing and sales, pace is important. Think about how to organize your team and empower them to go from concept to execution quickly.Quote: “This concept of niche media is to align our media buying strategy with how people consume content, which is a much more niche way. So right now we've just done, I think, five different podcast sponsorship deals with podcasts that are consumed by CMOs, which is our new target market. Marketing events, right? Talk about Forrester, Gartner. Where are CMOs? Where are they consuming content? Where are they listening to things? Go be there.”Episode Timestamps: *(14:05) The Trust Tree: Creating a bifurcated marketing team *(31:49) The Playbook: The efficacy of paid and organic search *(40:48) Quick Hits: Shane’s Quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Shane on LinkedInLearn more about WebflowLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Narine Galstian, CMO at SADA, an IT Services and Consulting company that helps customers move to the cloud and then innovate and explore what is possible on the cloud.In this episode, Narine discusses fostering ongoing conversations with customers and focusing on getting customers for life. She also dives into the importance of providing value at each stage of the customer journey and meeting customers where they are. Key Takeaways:It’s important to ensure that you are providing value to your customers at every stage of their journey and having ongoing conversations with them. You need to meet your customers where they are and be very mindful of their time. Customers may no longer be near their company headquarters, so you need to know where your decision makers are really sitting. Going to your customers allows you to create a more intimate experience and have a more captive audience. Quote: “ I think you have to kind of go where the customer is. While travel budgets are being cut everywhere right now, right? Everybody's very budget-conscious. You have to be mindful of everyone's time and make sure that you're bringing value to them. When we go on these roadshows, we're really investing time into putting these together and making sure that when the customer is coming to sit with us for 2, 3, 4 hours, that we're bringing value to them at every stage. And they appreciate that. They appreciate the fact that we're coming to them and they're not having to take time out of their schedule to fly across the country to sit in sessions that may not be relevant for them because they're too general at some of the big conferences, right?”Episode Timestamps:*(03:38) The Trust Tree: Ensure the marketing strategy is in sync with sales*(10:24) The Playbook: Investing in events and digital tools*(25:23) The Dust-Up: Being accountable and taking ownership of failures*(26:48) Quick Hits: Narine’s Quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Narine on LinkedInLearn more about SADALearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Kris Rudeegraap, Co-CEO, Sendoso, the leading gift sending platform that helps companies stand out by giving them new ways to engage with customers throughout the buyer’s journey.Kris talks about the value and the future of gifting, diving into how AI will enhance gifting efforts and creative ways companies use gifting to build trust with their customers. Key Takeaways:Gifting allows companies to engage with their customers in creative ways throughout the buying journey, helping them stand out from the competition.Utilizing data allows companies to send the right gift to the right person, and to be thoughtful with timing, messaging and the location it is sent to. The future of gifting will be enhanced by AI and will be automated.  Quote: “How AI can affect, what is the right gift to send? So, I think the plethora of data that we're sitting on from tens of millions of sends and what we're having access to through a lot of really interesting data that we've built from AI, but also through data that's available through third party enrichments. We'll be able to say, hey, does Kris like golfing? Or does Kris like tennis? And so there's interest graphs that we've built that will really help decide, okay, Kris gets this, it's going to resonate with him more. Then it's like, okay, where's the best place to send it?Is it his house? Is it an office? So, we can use data for that. We can say the timing, is it good to send it today for this prospect, or do we think that timing when they just went to your website, looked at your pricing page, and we want to trigger that. So, there's different reasons why you want to have timing be important.The message. So, we launched last year, a gift message rider, either the e-gift message or the handwritten note message. And so now we can craft a better message than, say, an SDR can write, by using AI. And I think writing is a key area there. So all that will make it easier to get the right gift to the right person and drive better results.”Episode Timestamps:*(37:26) Quick Hits: Kris’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Kris on LinkedInLearn more about SendosoLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with April Moh, CMO at Kyriba, leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions, delivering mission-critical capabilities for cash and risk management, payments and working capital solutions.In this episode, April shares her expertise on managing perceptions through PR and building a demand creation arm from scratch. She also dives into the process of rebranding, and the framework they used when crafting their strategic narrative.  Key Takeaways:To maximize your PR efforts, make sure you have a clear idea of the perceptions that you want to drive and how you are currently perceived among your audiences. When rebranding and recrafting your strategic narrative, define who the enemy is, and who the hero is. Find ways to quantify your demand creation arm beyond just direct ties to short-term revenue and be prepared to see results from that engine two years down the line. Quote: “A rebrand is more than just look and feel. A lot of it is also about what is that story and what is that strategic narrative? And for us, we worked through a very simple framework, which is to define what the enemy is. So the enemy represents the current way of work that is not productive for CFOs or treasurers. And then what the hero is. So how do we position ourselves as being able to really add value in solving that problem?”Episode Timestamps:*(12:21) The Trust Tree: Creating a scalable, repeatable marketing engine *(19:02) The Playbook: Paid media, PR and events*(34:18) The Dust Up: Changing a beloved mascot *(37:41) Quick Hits: April’s Quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with April on LinkedInLearn more about KyribaLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with John Solomon, CMO at Therabody, the wellness tech pioneer that brought us the Theragun, among other products that optimize human performance and unlock the body's natural ability to achieve health and well-being.In this episode, John shares his strategy to overcome the “Kleenex problem”and dives into how they prioritize the entry point to their brand. He also talks about how he structures his team with the brand at the center to avoid silos and strengthen their go-to market strategy.Key Takeaways:Focus on the product that serves as the entry to your brand to get customers into your ecosystem. Distinctive brand assets are essential and need to be protected, especially for companies facing the “Kleenex problem”, when their product name becomes synonymous with the product and less associated with the company brand.Structuring your brand team at the center of the marketing function helps avoid siloes and strengthens your go-to-market strategy.Quote: I'm a big believer that your kind of brand team has to sit in the middle. It's the hub of your going to market approach, right? And so I have the brand team really thinking about it in those three areas that I talked to you about before, the performance, wellness, and beauty. And then we have specific brand managers that really think about specific audiences. But that's who's driving the integrated process. That’s who is bringing the functions together, saying, hey, we're launching this product, or, hey, we got Mother's Day, or, hey, this week we have sleep week. And then bringing together what's influencer, what's PR, what's the site, what's email, what's media, what all of those teams are doing to drive that integrated process.So that's what I'm a really big believer in and how you structure things. Or else it becomes really siloed. It becomes fragmented. You have one team going over there shooting that content. Another team going over there doing that and it oesn't hang together. It's not bigger. It's not like 1 plus 1 equals 4 or 5.Episode Timestamps:*(13:19) The Trust Tree: Addressing the “Kleenex problem” *(34:27) The Playbook: Capturing attention through television *(45:03) Quick Hits: John’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with John Solomonon LinkedInLearn more about TherabodyLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Sun Lee, CMO at BigPanda, a software company that enables organizations to organize and mobilize the world’s DevOps and ITOps data.In this episode, Sun shares why she no longer thinks about the customer journey as a traditional funnel, why it's important to "go big or go home on events", and the importance of face-to face human interaction.Key Takeaways:The traditional funnel may not be the best way to think about the customer journey; it is more like a spiral.It’s better to invest heavily in a few meaningful events, than to do many events each year.As a new CMO, don’t be afraid to be vocal on what could be better across functions.Quote: “One thing that I always tell people is the traditional funnel is dead. When you interview with a startup CEO, they will tell you, we have a pipeline problem, we have a sales funnel problem, or we have a product marketing problem. They have a lot of problems, they're trying to classify that into a certain org or function. And the one thing that I say is, it's actually all of the above. Because how people buy these days, it's not like you become a stage one prospect, you become two or three, four, and then you're down to, and then one activity will move you through the funnel. Like the concept actually doesn't exist. So if you look at the customer journey that we have from a BigPanda perspective, it's like a giant spiral.”Episode Timestamps: *(03:41) The Trust Tree: Structuring the team to match the customer journey*(13:17) The Playbook: PMM budget as a priority*(32:54) The Dust Up: Brand tensions moving into new markets*(36:00) Quick Hits: Sun’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Sun Lee on LinkedInLearn more about BigPandaLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Gerardo A Dada, CMO at Catchpoint, a company that increases retailers' internet resilience by catching issues in the internet stack before they impact business.In this episode, Gerardo discusses his ungated content strategy and the venn diagram of content marketing. He also shares his thoughts on sticking to your ICP and his strategy to only go after high intent marketing leads.Key Takeaways:When thinking about your content marketing, you should find content that fits within three concentric circles.It’s important to stick to your defined ICP and Gerardo has chosen to only go after high intent marketing leads.Marketers should stay disciplined and should avoid artificially inflating demand. While there is a role for bribery in marketing, it can be easily misused.Quote: I believe that the best content marketing strategy, especially if you're in a position where you're trying to educate the market, you're trying to establish thought leadership, is finding that space in the center of three concentric circles.One is what your audience cares about. The other one is what you know more than anybody else. And the third one is what the technology or the point of views that will predispose your prospects to buy, or increase the likelihood of them to buy.Episode Timestamps: *(6:44) The Trust Tree: Defining and sticking to your ICP *(28:25) The Playbook: ABM strategy, content and intent*(50:03) Quick Hits: Gerardo’s quick hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Gerardo on LinkedInLearn more about CatchpointLearn more about Caspian Studios

Every week on Pipeline Visionaries, we sit down with amazing marketing leaders to uncover the pipeline strategies that have been fundamental to their success. In each episode, we ask these guests which three areas of investment are most important to their marketing strategies. Tune into this special series to hear the budget items our CMO guests can’t live without!Find parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and nineEpisode Timestamps: *(01:37): Grant Johnson, CMO at Billtrust*(04:22): Jessica Gilmartin, CMO at Calendly*(06:11): Megan McDonagh, CMO at Amperity*(07:17): Shafqat Islam, CMO at Optimizely*(08:42:) Efrat Ravid, CMO at Quantum Metric*(10:59): Orlando Baeza, CMO & CRO at Flock Freight*(13:32): Jenny Victor, CMO at Epicor*(16:18): Jessica Shapiro, CMO at LiveRamp*(19:09): Jacqueline Woods, CMO at Teradata*(21:24): Brad Rinklin, CMO at Infoblox*(24:33): Celia Fleischaker, CMO at isolved  Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Mark Viden, SVP of Brand at CommonSpirit Health, a non-profit that operates 140 hospitals and more than 2,200 care centers serving sites across 24 states.In this episode, Mark discusses building an emotional connection with the consumer, using your brand promise as an operating principle and his focus on sharing the amazing stories in the healthcare industry. Key Takeaways:When brand promises are guiding principles for company operations, it creates a competitive advantage. When building a brand, focus on the people in your ecosystem and on creating an emotional connection with the consumer.Quote: “What I see and have seen all the time is the competitors will start to nibble at what we do. They'll start to come in and borrow some of our themes. But they never stay with it because, again, I think kind of the flavor of the day and then the shiny object over there captures their attention and they're on to something else. Where we have this anchoring principle, “Hello humankindness” that, again, is seeded through so many areas of the organization.It is our brand promise.”Episode Timestamps: *(04:19) The Trust Tree: Building an emotional connection with the consumer *(16:12) The Playbook: Creating value alignment *(30:44) Quick Hits: Mark’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Mark Viden on LinkedInLearn more about CommonSpirit HealthLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Leslie Henthorn, CMO at Ironclad, a contract lifecycle management software that provides a secure way to create and collaborate on contracts.In Leslie’s return to the podcast, she discusses navigating the shifts in AI, Ironclad’s influencer strategy, and getting into the psyche of your target persona. She also talks about strengthening your relationship with sales and prioritizing alignment even when you have a strong inbound funnel.Key Takeaways:It’s important to get into the psyche of your target persona and to think about their frame of mind day-to-day.You need to nurture your sales relationship, even when you have a strong inbound pipeline.When working with influencers, it is important to find people that truly believe in the work that the company is doing and are genuine fans of the product.Quote:“We have tried to grow closer to sales and really support outbound in a way that marketing hasn't before. I think when you have a strong inbound funnel, sometimes your sales relationship isn't as strong as it should be. Yeah, you might be watching conversion and you might be watching how things are moving forward to pipeline, but it's easy to go like this after that. And when you start to understand that new business shouldn't drive your entire company strategy, that customer adoption, cross sell, understanding the logos you want to go after. This is something we've really been working on.”Episode Timestamps:*(11:02) The Playbook: Changing tactics over the last yearSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Leslie on LinkedInLearn more about IroncladLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Dana Barrett, VP of Marketing at Tremendous, a company that offers a simple way to send rewards and payouts around the world.In this episode, Dana discusses the ways that incentivizing your ideal customer provides impact across use cases, whether you are looking to build pipeline, drive sales, get participants in studies, etc. She also talks about carefully identifying your target persona and focusing on a small number of priorities.Key Takeaways:Incentives are a great way to drive impact, regardless of your use case (generate pipeline, sales, gaining study participants, etc.)It’s important to find the sweet spot when incentivizing. Don’t offer a discount so high that people take the offer without any interest in the product; make it just low enough that it attracts people who genuinely have an interest.Define your ideal customer persona and stay focused on a few key items to go after them.Quote: “ Incentives, regardless of your use case, are a great way to drive impact. Whether you're trying to grow pipeline. Whether you're trying to drive sales. Whether you want to make sure people participate in your studies, and you can recruit people in global markets that you're trying to figure out how to get people to just respond or participate. And so based on what we do, we're starting to see some best practices or things that can actually position you better to reach your ultimate goal, which is sales, pipeline, et cetera.”Episode Timestamps: *(02:52) The Trust Tree: Building awareness of brand and category*(14:11) The Playbook: Investing in content*(28:17) The Dust Up: Diffusing tension between product and sales *(30:07) Dana’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Dana on LinkedInLearn more about TremendousLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Riikka Söderlund, CMO at Katana Cloud Inventory, a company that provides SMBs with easy-to-use inventory management software, to get them the real-time data that they need.In this episode, Riika discusses staying accountable for intentional experimentation, how she invests in talent and why she dislikes the term “marketing strategy”. Key Takeaways:Experiments should improve results and should fit within goals. Including experiments in your overall budget, instead of pulling them into a separate, “experimental budget” keeps you accountable. Talent development is an uncuttable item and marketing leaders should align individual growth aspirations with company goals. Being right isn’t always enough. Marketing leaders need to be strong internal communicators and influence opinions to get the right results. Quote: “ I have a gazillion other marketing KPIs, of course, but at the end of the day, if we're not driving revenue, then it doesn't matter. I am not a fan of measuring leads or MQLs. Honestly, revenue is the only metric that tells you, did you generate pipeline? Did you reach the right audience? Is your value proposition correct? And is your brand resonating with that target audience? It's the only one that combines all the aspects of marketing.”Episode Timestamps:*(02:42) The Trust Tree: Why Riikka doesn’t believe in the term “marketing strategy”*(12:53) The Playbook: The importance of content and intentional experimentation *(31:54) The Dust Up: Becoming a strong internal influencer*(33:45) Riikka’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Riika on LinkedInLearn more about KatanaLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with William Tyree, CMO at IntelligenceBank, a platform that helps marketing teams get brand and legal approved content out the door faster. In this episode, William discusses his focus on being the easiest company to buy from, the importance of empathizing with buyers, and how customer buying behavior has changed over time. Key Takeaways:Buyers have a hard job and marketers need to prioritize making their company easy to buy from.Product marketing needs to be about empathizing with buyers, not just pitching the good things about your product.Quote: “My goal is to make IntelligenceBank the easiest company in our space to actually buy from. Buyers have a hard job. It's really hard to lasso all those different people on your buying committee and get them to agree on you as a vendor. So, to be the easiest, we have to assume that buyers are going to conduct at least three quarters of their research before they even talk to a seller.”Episode Timestamps:*(05:17) - The Trust Tree: The complex roles for people in charge of brand *(16:15) - The Playbook: Becoming easy to buy fromSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with William Tyree on LinkedInLearn more about IntelligenceBankLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Celia Fleischaker, CMO at isolved, a trusted HCM leader that provides software and services to meet the needs of HR professionals. Through their partner network, they reach more than 5 million employees and 145,000 employers across all 50 states. In this episode, Celia shares with us how they are investing in and amplifying their engaged community as well as how their focus on relationships and primary research supports their marketing efforts.Key Takeaways:Coming into a company with an engaged customer base is a welcome challenge for a CMO, and amplifying that engagement is imperative. It’s worth investing in primary research, to better connect with customers in ways that are actually of interest to them. There is a continued convergence between customer experience and marketing. Leveraging data and information from customer service and blending that with marketing helps clarify what customers need. Quote: I think there's such a cool convergence between customer experience and marketing. And I think they are just continuing to get closer and closer. At Verint, where I was before, I worked in the CX space and we saw it there a lot, a lot of our customers realizing the power of taking customer experience, customer service information, blending that from a marketing perspective. And the amount of data that you get that really points to what you need to be doing for your customers,  where they are at a relationship point with you.And that's what I think with the CXO role, the customer experience role here, taking that, looking at that from customer service perspective, from a marketing perspective and pulling things together to look holistically at what is it that we can do both internally and externally to drive a better experience and how is that going to benefit, yes, our customers and the satisfaction that they have, but from a marketing perspective, there's so much opportunity to better understand what your customers are going through and it just puts you in this better position. Episode Timestamps:*(04:36) - The Trust Tree: Creating demand within community*(08:15) - The Playbook: Investing in primary research*(33:49) - Quick Hits: Celia’s Quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Celia on LinkedInLearn more about isolvedLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Kimberly Storin, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Zayo Group, a leading telecommunications company with a network that stretches over 16.8 million fiber miles and spans 141,000 route miles across North America and Europe.  In this episode, Kimberly shares with us how she built an end-to-end marketing organization within Zayo and demonstrated the value of the marketing function, diving into expanding their buying committee and creating a “Shark Tank'' mindset where people share their best ideas. Key TakeawaysMarketing can be  undervalued as a function and collaborating with C-suite peers is essential to a CMO’s ability to demonstrate their impact on revenue for the organization.At the end of the day, marketing needs to be the “voice of” and the “voice to” the market, and needs to avoid short-term, quarter-by-quarter thinking.There is value in shifting to a “Shark Tank mindset” and having people bring their ideas, then funding great ideas.Quote:“At the end of the day, we really just need to be the voice of and the voice to the market. If we're thinking about in-quarter revenue, we're not doing our job. Our job is to be thinking about the next quarter, next year, next five years, and how do we position the brand for the maximum growth efficiency. And yet so often I talk to CMOs who are stuck in this, well, what did you do for me this quarter? And if that's where marketing is focused, then marketing will never be successful.” Episode Timestamps:*(03:43 ) - The Trust Tree: Expanding your buying committee *(15:19) - The Playbook: Investing in the top of the funnel*(35:37) - The Dust-Up: Learning to have constructive conflict*(39:01) - Quick Hits: Kim’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.LinksConnect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Kimberly on LinkedInLearn more about Zayo GroupLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Esther-Mireya Tejeda, CMO at Anywhere Real Estate Inc., a leader of integrated residential real estate services, whose portfolio includes some of the most recognized brands in real estate. In this episode, Esther-Mireya discusses how marketers should consider themselves “business psychologists” and shares how she is incorporating neuroscience research when creating customer personas.Key Takeaways:Buying decisions for customers often have more to do with subconscious, emotional drivers that cannot be articulated in surveys or focus groups.Marketers should think about themselves as “business psychologists”, and can use neuroscience to better understand subconscious drivers for their customers.Marketers need to maintain connectivity to business objectives and avoid the trap of short-term thinking.Quote: “We have been really trying to get to the unconscious emotional makeup of consumers that set up their predisposition to like or dislike and to behave or not behave in particular ways. I call that the layer below the things that we are already measuring. And it's based on this premise that over 95 percent of our human behavior. is actually rooted and driven by unconscious emotions that we're not even aware of. So it's not stuff that I, as a consumer, would be able to articulate in a focus group.It's not things that I would be able to, as a consumer, articulate in a survey. And so it is our job as marketers, if we think about ourselves as business psychologists, to get further down and deeper into that mindset, to get to the heart set to understand those things. And that's really what this is about.”Episode Timestamps:*(08:24) - The Trust Tree: Buying decisions are largely unconscious *(26:13) - The Playbook: Research and insights are essential to success*(37:23) - The Dust Up: Leaving what isn’t right for you Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with on Esther-Mireya LinkedInLearn more about Anywhere Real Estate Inc.Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Ben Slater, SVP of Marketing at Beamery, a Talent Lifecycle Management platform that empowers companies to understand the skills and capabilities they have, build more agile workforce plans, and attract, retain, upskill, and redeploy their workforce.In this episode, Ben encourages companies to think about the future of their workforce, shares why internal marketing efforts are often overlooked but shouldn’t be, and why leadership should have their hands in choosing talent. Ben also talks about how creating demand starts with a story and how they go about just that at Beamery.Key Takeaways:HR is an increasingly strategic part of the organization. How companies think about the future of their workforce impacts how they can achieve their business objectives. The internal role of marketing is one of its most overlooked functions. Marketing has an amazing opportunity to be the internal communications engine that brings people back to the “why” of the organization.Creating demand starts with a story. Specifically, demand starts with a story that is not just about your product, but about a fundamental shift in the market that is accelerating your category. Quote: “ For us, if we think about the demand process, what we are really focused on is not just demand capture, but also demand creation. I'm a huge believer that creating demand, it all starts with the story. So it's a story that's not just about your product, but about a fundamental shift in the market. Something that is either creating your category or accelerating it. Something that's fundamentally impacting your buyer and the way they go about their role on a day-to-day basis. What's the big story that we think is most relevant to our audience and that's in line with our point of view on the market? How do we ensure that there's internal alignment around that story? Because I think if you get the storytelling right and if you're able to tie the different channels and programs together in a way that is consistent, clear, not just for the external audience, but also for internal teams, it can really be a force multiplier for demand.”Episode Timestamps:*(03:28) - The Trust Tree: Addressing talent gaps accelerates transformation*(17:24) - The Playbook: Investing in community*(33:52) - Quick Hits: Ben’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Ben on LinkedInLearn more about BeameryLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Brad Rinklin, CMO at Infoblox, a Computer and Network Security company that unites networking and security to deliver unmatched performance and protection for a world that never stops. In this episode, Brad shares with us how Infoblox is expanding its buyer persona reach, what a modern marketing team looks like, and the importance of adapting to whatever your data tells you. Brad also talks about what makes a great marketer better than the average marketer - creating the right thing, in the right place, at the right time.  Key Takeaways:Bringing in new buyers through education. When you’re looking at personas outside of your normal reach, be sure you’re providing educational resources so they can better understand who you are and what you offer.Partner marketing acts as a force multiplier for your brand. Good partner relationships provide credibility in spaces you’re not currently in and can potentially cut marketing efforts and costs in half.A lesson in marketing from fly fishing. Whether it’s the buyer journey, the “bait” or content you create, remember your efforts should be focused on one buyer at a time. So, how can you be a better marketer? Provide the right thing, at the right place, at the right time. Quote: “What makes a great marketer better than an average marketer? Two fishermen go on the lake, they both have the exact same rod, the same reel. You might even have the same bait. What makes the one just ripping fish out left and right? And the other one doesn't catch anything at all? It's the same concept. You've gotta understand the behaviors of the buyers that you're selling to and the market that's out there and what else is out there trying to steal their attention.” Episode Timestamps: *(05:09) - The Trust Tree: Passive decisions have big implications*(25:11) - The Playbook: Partners as as force multiplier for your brand*(32:46) - Quick Hits: Brad’s Quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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. Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Brad on LinkedInLearn more about InfobloxLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Stephanie McCarty, CMO at Taylor Morrison, the 5th largest homebuilder in the U.S. made up of the nation's leading homebuilders and developers. In this episode, Stephanie shares with us why your website should be a selling tool not a seduction tool, how the role of sales is changing, and the unique ways Taylor Morrison has created partnerships to boost brand awareness and demand. Stephanie also talks about how companies should be approaching the next generation of buyers by mixing up traditional marketing models.  Key Takeaways:Fitting your products/services to the various life stages of consumers. When you’re able to meet the customers where they are at any place in their lives and lifestyles, you’ll create repeat buyers naturally.Mix up your marketing game. There are marketing models a lot of us use that simply don’t fit the next generation of buyers. These outdated systems can act as unintentional traps for consumers who will probably decide the process isn’t worth their time or money. Make sure your company is removing as many buyer traps as possible by mixing up marketing models.Thinking of the customer journey after they buy. Once a customer buys from you, do you have strategies in place that benefit them and keep you top of mind? Innovative, engaging content is a great way to create a win-win for you and your buyers. Quote: “Remember a time when, before Zappos, before Amazon, when you had to actually go into a department store to buy shoes, or before Uber, and Airlines, or you didn't have your boarding pass on your phone, you had a physical one. So it's just taking our executive team through kind of reminding them that things that they're used to today haven't always been, and that's the space that homebuilding needs to enter. We need to enter that chat room and talk about here's what has always worked, here's that model, but there's a lot of that model that doesn't fit the next generation of homebuyers.” Episode Timestamps: *(04:28) - The Trust Tree: Managing a family of brands*(24:39) - The Playbook: Creating innovative content your consumers (and beyond!) can benefit from*(41:30) - Quick Hits: Stephanie’s Quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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. Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Stephanie on LinkedInLearn more about Taylor MorrisonLearn more about Caspian StudiosTaylor Morrison x The Home Edit