This episode features an interview with Steve Rotter, CMO at DeepL, a global communications platform powered by Language AI.

In this episode, Steve shares with us the power of a small uplift to your website when you see large scale website traffic, and the importance of pushing your point of view over your product features. He also dives into the value of brand in avoiding churn.

Key Takeaways:

• Small changes to the website can have a small uplift, and when you are dealing with large-scale website traffic, that can have a big impact on the business. For large enterprises, don’t underestimate the value of small optimizations on the website.
• People churn products, they don’t churn from valued brands and communities. Make sure to invest in your brand accordingly.
• Explaining your POV over pushing your features, allows you to demonstrate the outsized impact of your product more effectively.

Quote:

•  Brand is critical. My general sense is, people churn from products, they don't churn from communities, they don't churn from brands with personalities that they enjoy. So, we spend a lot of time looking at that in terms of, you know, what is the voice, what is the language, what is the identity of the brand?

Episode Timestamps:

*(04:11) The Trust Tree: People churn from products, not brands and communities

*(24:13) The Playbook: Explain your point of view, over pushing all your features

*(39:22) Quick Hits: Scott’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 LinkedIn
• Connect with Scott on LinkedIn
• Learn more about DeepL
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Bill Macaitis, Founder & CEO, SaaS CMO Pro, where he shares growth strategies for SaaS and AI companies. His past roles include CMO positions at Slack and Zendesk, and SVP of Marketing at Salesforce.

Bill joins the podcast to discuss findings from a recent survey of over 300 B2B marketers that gives insights into marketing strategies and budgets. He shares what they learned about marketing versus sales budgets, the most common attribution model, and more.

Key Takeaways:

• Companies that are growing the fastest, invest the most in marketing. While cause and effect of that correlation is unclear, it’s an interesting finding.
• Pipeline generation was one of the most tracked metrics for CMOs, which is a nice move away from only looking at MQLs or leads. Unfortunately, awareness was rarely tracked, making it hard for marketing teams to invest in long-term initiatives.
• A lot of companies, 65 percent, continue to use first or last touch attribution models.
  
  

Quote:

•  So, what we learned is a lot of companies, I think especially in their earlier stages - percent still use first- or last- touch.  It's kind of crazy. I'm still shocked by it. I remember my time at Salesforce,  I was running the marketing ops team at that point, along with a couple other teams, and I just did a deep dive into attribution. Like I really wanted to understand like, hey, how many touches are people having with us before they became a lead? And then how many touches before they became a customer? What we would see is people would have 10, 20, 30 interactions or touches with us before they became a lead, and then they'd have like another 20 or 30 before they became a customer. And just imagine giving all the credit to the very first or last thing. And by the way, it's one of the reasons Google got so big was because a very common last touch thing is they will search on your company name. Branded search, right? And it's like, oh, like the SEM guys are like, this is amazing, right? We need to spend more on Google because they're producing these massive deals. And it's like, well wait, what about all the stuff in the middle?

Episode Timestamps:

*(03:48) Marketing Strategies and Budgeting

*(22:31) Attribution Models in Marketing

*(26:44) Top Metrics for B2B SaaS and AI Companies

*(31:06) Marketing's Role in Revenue and Expansion

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 LinkedIn
• Connect with Bill on LinkedIn
• Learn more about SaaS CMO Pro
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Jenny Force, VP of Global Demand Generation at Meltwater, a company with a suite of solutions that spans media, social, consumer, and sales intelligence. Jenny discusses her experience launching the company’s first big summit, as well as the work they have done to automate their inbound process to maximize each MQL.

Key Takeaways:

• Launching a new big initiative and then proving ROI to the executive team requires careful positioning and careful measurement against KPIs.
• Automating the process for inbound leads through tech removes manual human intervention and puts the sellers into positions where they can do their job at a more impactful level.
• Imbuing campaigns with humor, while a little scary, can cause a big lift in engagement.

Quote:

• We've been really investing and not just spending more money to get more MQLs. It's making, not to sound cliche, but every MQL count. It's about automating the process. Here at Meltwater, we're a 20-year-old company, we're very sales-centric and there's a lot of energy that used to be put behind outbound. So, it was changing the narrative around inbound. Until we totally make this change as a business where everyone in the business is shouting to get an inbound lead and are super excited about it, it's how can I get every single lead responded to in under an hour without any delays? And it's been a bit of a journey to put the right tech in place to automate those processes that we can, take out that manual human intervention and then put the sellers into the business so they can actually sell. So, I've got some tech around instant meeting scheduling, self-serve demos, a conversational email that we've put in. And honestly, I feel like that has already had such an impact on our conversion rates. I wouldn't get rid of it.

Episode Timestamps:

*(06:03) The Trust Tree: Improving inbound efficiency and increasing deal velocity

*(14:32) The Playbook: Launching a summit and investing in automation

*(45:53) The Dust Up: Changing inbound KPIs to get a seat at the table

*(49:30) Quick Hits: Jenny’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 LinkedIn
• Connect with Jenny on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Meltwater
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Luke Arno, CRO at Transcend, a privacy platform that empowers brands to enhance regulatory stances and improve customer relationships through data transparency, consent, and control.

Luke shares his thoughts on strategy that prioritizes data privacy and limits engagement to prospects who opt in. He also discusses making the sales function an advisor and consultant to potential customers.

Key Takeaways:

• One size fits all messaging is not successful and does more damage than good. It needs to go.
• Marketing while prioritizing data privacy is a different ball game and requires a series of calculated investments based on the target market.
• Empowering your sales leaders as thought leaders, and asking them to act as advisors, makes them very valuable at events.

Quote:

• “ How do we most effectively deliver thought leadership or ask the right questions from our customers about the problems they're solving? And we invest deeply in enabling our sales force to be subject matter experts, and then therefore we rely on them to help scale, to meet our customers and open up the conversation in a trusted environment. Hence the name of the segment, the trust tree. But that whole process requires sales rep to put their sales position down and, effectively, ship the paradigm for how they think about engaging customers as more of a consultant or an advisor.  So, we try and delight our customers with a sales free experience, but we do rely deeply on the employees we hire at every function to effectively manage the conversation as a trusted advisor.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(07:47) The Trust Tree: Thoughts on marketing strategy from a CRO

*(21:52) The Playbook: The psychology of prospecting

*(37:03) The Dust Up: Show up prepared to articulate your position

*(40:45) Quick Hits: Luke’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 LinkedIn
• Connect with Luke on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Transcend
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Kamal Thakarsey, CMO at Smartling, an AI Translation Platform that helps companies grow globally, faster. Kamal shares his strategy to stand out in a crowded market. He also dives into understanding trends, educating your customer, and testing even your smallest hypothesis.

Key Takeaways:

• Fight complacency in your messaging. Companies may be comfortable with what they are doing, and comfortable sticking with the status quo, so you need to demonstrate the value of changing their approach.
• Test everything, from button colors to CTAs and beyond. Testing often surprises you and proves your hypotheses wrong.
• If you’re in a crowded market, focus on truly understanding your market and customers. Investing in that research can support your efforts to differentiate.

Quote:

•   Being an established market, there's lot of kind of noise that's happening and every company kind of raising your hand and saying, we do this, we do this.I think for us also a big part of our strategy is like standing out really like trying to show the market that like we are kind of being industry leaders and helping the space move forward. , I think it's also really about for us, also about how we really highlight kind of the value we bring to an organization and a team. Not just like, tactically, here's some solutions, we help you kind of of do better, but like, what do we actually bring the table and how are we going to help you be successful? I think to me, that's really just like foundational to them, like how we kind of run our programs and campaigns and how more effective they can be, rather than just kind of de facto doing things because we should be doing them. So, you know, one thing I really stress is just really continue to do like market research and understanding, you know, what are their priorities? What are the business initiatives? What are their executives and leaders asking them on an ongoing basis?How can we then understand those trends and that feedback and really put together, you know, smart, timely, relevant campaigns that are going to reach them? Because, like I said, we're in a crowded market with a lot of different vendors, both in the software and the services side, and we have to stand out.

Episode Timestamps:

*(03:35) The Trust Tree: Capturing the marketing and targeting accounts

*(12:24) The Playbook: Driving intent through search

*(36:59) The Dust Up: Advocating for self-service

*(41:50) Quick Hits: Kamal’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 LinkedIn
• Connect with Kamal on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Smartling
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Gaurav Agarwal, COO and Revenue Leader at ClickUp, an all-in-one productivity platform that replaces all individual workplace productivity tools with a single, unified platform.

Gaurav shares his thoughts on keeping your content strategy relevant and the iteration and testing needed to go viral. He also discusses maintaining a blend of B2B and B2C tactics to achieve scalable success.

Key Takeaways:

• Content strategy and going viral is much more about consistency and iteration than it is about the spark of one amazing ideas. Rigorous and experimentation leads to long-term ROI.
• To stay relevant in marketing, you have to keep up to date on generational trends and new formats of reaching people. You can’t get comfortable being a great marketer in an outdate channel.
• You have to keep bets in your portfolio that have an asymmetric upside, which you can only do if you are willing to take on a certain amount of risk. Don’t get too excited about immediate ROI.

Quote:

• A huge part of perfecting craft is you want to stay relevant. I know amazing marketers who are gods of Facebook and building viral content on Facebook. And they fought the short form vertical video format with TikTok so much. They looked down upon it because they thought that this is cringy, this is shot on an iPhone. And I'm like, why are you doing this to yourself? Like, do you not want to be culturally relevant in the next decade? So, a huge part of a great team is staying hungry and not thinking that you've arrived because content, media, consumer preferences, even software is a generational business. You have to stay on with the formats of what the future is and keep moving towards that direction versus be so happy that I'm this amazing marketer on Facebook. Dude, like your time is up. Facebook pages don't get any distribution anymore.

Episode Timestamps:

*(03:29) The Trust Tree: Size of audience and LTV should drive your marketing strategy

*(11:18) The Playbook: Strategic iteration to go viral on social

*(38:03) The Dust Up: Adapt content to different channels and stay true to your brand ethos

*(43:52) Quick Hits: Gaurav’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 LinkedIn
• Connect with Gaurav on LinkedIn
• Learn more about ClickUp
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Ural Cebeci, SVP Marketing, Global Demand Generation at Braze, a customer engagement platform that allows any marketer to collect and take action on data from any source, so they can creatively engage with customers in real time, across channels.

Ural shares his perspective on the challenges and hesitations surrounding personalization, and his thoughts on how to move forward. He also dives into understanding digital body language and customer signals.

Key Takeaways:

• A good demand strategy requires two things: GTM alignment and having the infrastructure to understand the business through data.
• To have a strong brand, you need healthy, long-term customer relationships, which requires understanding digital body language and customer signals.
• Marketers have valid hesitations around personalization, due to compliance and data privacy issues, and fear of eroding customer trust. As a result, using channels to continually get consent from customers and actually delivering value is key.

Quote:

• ”In the end, in order to have a strong brand, you need to have healthy and long-term customer relationships. And we all acquire customers, users, through campaigns, but then retaining them really means connecting with the human behind that anonymous user or anonymous visitor. And that brings back the whole digital body language. Like we understand what that user is signaling, like what is at the surface versus what they are saying with their engagement, like what they say and collect that data and then like use that to drive better and more meaningful customer relationships.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(03:55) The Trust Tree: Understanding the business through data

*(11:46) The Playbook: Any channel is cuttable, you need to understand your marketing mix

*(25:59) The Dust Up: Alignment and committing to the same idea

*(27:43) Quick Hits: Ural’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 LinkedIn
• Connect with Ural on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Braze
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Emma Robinson, B2B Marketing Lead at Canva, a global online visual communications platform on a mission to empower the world to design.

In this episode, Emma dives into Canva's shift from individual to enterprise functionality, sharing her thoughts on the inherent value of investing in brand at any stage. She also dives into the increasing importance of word-of-mouth and avoiding the sea of sameness in B2B marketing.

Key Takeaways:

• Brand and creative help you to get potential buyers thinking and feeling, and help you differentiate among a sea of sameness in B2B marketing, and pushes buyers towards action.
• While analyst relations are still important, word-of-mouth and peer-driven buying are increasingly important, potentially reducing some of the importance of analyst reports.
• Traditional SEO is changing, and having high-quality, insight rich content with an authentic point of view will be important.

Quote:

•  Traditional SEO is probably changing somewhat. I mean, most of us who have searched something in recent times will not necessarily be searching just in Google. So, finding ways to make sure that our content will be trained by an LLM in the right ways, you know, people still need answers, but they're getting them in a very different way now. Image search and, you know, tech search and all these different things that will inevitably change what we know as traditional SEO. So, I think for that, it's again, back to the point about being grounded in really good quality content, like colored content that has a point of view that does feel less AI oriented and more really rich in insights insights, for example, like primary research, those types of things, but that's still going to stay. And then I think influencer marketing and things like podcasts and so forth, like all of those sort of authentic moments are going to matter in kind of the new world. So, we're definitely rethinking our search strategy there, and so more to come on that.

Episode Timestamps:

*(03:33) The Trust Tree: Changing perceptions and moving into enterprise

*(23:16) The Playbook: Thinking and feeling to action

*(39:53) The Dust Up: Do you invest in brand equity for the long term?

*(43:53) Quick Hits: Emma’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 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianfaison/
• Connect with Emma on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-robinson-mtkg/
• Learn more about Canva: https://www.linkedin.com/company/canva/
• Learn more about Caspian Studios: https://www.linkedin.com/company/canva/