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 disagreements

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 LinkedIn
• Connect with Kristin on LinkedIn
• Learn more about symplr
• Learn 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 LinkedIn
• Connect with Shane on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Webflow
• Learn 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 LinkedIn
• Connect with Narine on LinkedIn
• Learn more about SADA
• Learn more about Caspian Studios