Show Me the Proof, Get to the Point

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Let’s face it: times are tough across the board. With a lot of financial uncertainties to consider, companies are scrutinizing their expenses with finer tooth combs, ensuring that there is absolutely no wasted time or efforts. For workers, this means being able to prove that your work is making an active difference for your company. While that doesn’t mean that you need to be directly responsible for revenues, it DOES mean that you should be moving the needle of productivity in some way.

This week, we welcome Mason Cosby back to the show to discuss the necessary steps that workers should take to prove your worth as a marketer. Mason is a Podcast Host, Ambassador at GTM Partners, and the long-term Director of Demand Generation for Sales Assembly. Suffice to say, Mason knows quite a bit about the work, the skills and the people it takes to bring a product to market. How did Mason get into his work, what were some of the mindsets that led him down this career path, and how did partner relationships drive many of his core decisions?

Let’s get started!

MINDSETS:

Utilize Marketing Relationships - LinkedIn continues to be an incredible tool for building business relationships. For Mason, LinkedIn was an opportunity to generate leads through trusted partners and connections — trust is the name of the game!
Scale Through Skills - As Mason puts it, you can’t over-index on head count. Rather, you have the team you have, and you are better off improving the skills of your team. Your team deserves the nurturing through skills-building to help them do their jobs!
Ensure the Pipeline - Nobody cares what marketing does, as long as the pipeline is full. When it’s NOT full, that’s where the issues come in - job loss, budget reductions, and other short & long-term issues.
Soft Asks - Sometimes, the best thing you can do to start a conversation is ask someone if they need help. For Mason, this means sending out the occasional LinkedIn message to see what services people are looking for.

SKILLSETS:

Adaptability - Mason was one of the first marketers hired by his company – and for a time, the only marketer of the team. When a person loses their leader in a company, the assumption is that THEY are now the leader. Adaptability and an openness to move swiftly in your role is crucial.
Effective Content Production - When organic content is a huge component of your business, it better be good, or people will tune out.
Filling Skill Gaps - Skill gaps are the quiet killer of growth. Without the right skills, a company’s growth will plateau. Being able to recognize those gaps and tend to them is a crucial skillset for any leader.
Paid Ads - There is very significant value in being a paid ads specialist. On a team, diversifying your skillset by honing in on the data aspects of paid ads can be the key to securing your position.
Addressing Bandwidth - You can’t be everywhere all of the time. For startups, that can be a delicate balance. How much of your bandwidth can be dedicated to each activity? Knowing the importance of your work from a zoomed-out perspective will prevent issues down the road.
Video Editing - Editing is a skill and a tool. Like any skill, there are experts in the field that will do it A LOT better than you, especially if it’s not a top priority. As a skill, it is tremendously valuable for any marketing team.

TOOLSETS:

LinkedIn
Video Editing Software
Email
PodSqueeze
ChatGPT
Niche-Podcast Tours
Google
Spotify
The Content Matrix (Stephen G. Pope)

RESULTS:

For any business, at the end of the day, it is important to look at the correlation between it’s marketing efforts and it’s pipeline. Trackability ends up being one of the top focuses for a company like Mason’s — and with that comes the importance of having the skill to track specialized data in the first place. No single source of marketing is a single cause of success. What matters is that the actions are happening, and that the pipeline continues to move and generate business.

In a qualitative sense, Mason looks to tactics as simple as social media mentions, engagements, and other metrics to indicate how his company is breaking out of it’s existing mentions to larger audiences. In creating more publicly accessible content (the type that stretches beyond existing audiences), Mason and his team at Sales Assembly see more and more people viewing and talking about their operations.

A bit more about Mason:

Mason Cosby hosts a variety of talents as a thought leader in the marketing space. Since February 2023, Mason has acted as the Director of Demand Generation for Sales Assembly, a company that provides crucial educational tools that combine strategic skills development, peer communities and other learning platforms. Mason is also the host of The Marketing Ladder podcast, a podcast dedicated to learning how to grow a marketing career from today’s leaders.

Connect with Mason:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/masoncosby/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sales-assembly/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-marketing-ladder/

Connect with Mike & Gaby @ Proofpoint Marketing:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Marketing Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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“Culture” is starting to feel like more of a generality, don’t you think? Companies fall back on pleasantries when describing day-to-day operations, and the one word that always comes up is “culture.” But what is good culture, and why is it so difficult to define? After all, team members need (and deserve) more than a pat on the back and a pizza party to establish company culture.

In this week’s episode, we speak with the Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer for Nymbus, Allison Netzer, for a conversation on company culture, and employer brand as an output of a culture-focused business. Is culture a measurable component of your brand? Is it possible to master culture while growing a brand?

Let’s get started!

MINDSETS:

Reference Scorecards - Beyond the fact that Allison hates KPIs, it’s important to keep your goals measurable. You may score points with business jargon, for example, but does that have an internal or external benefit? Racking up points on a “scorecard” and understanding what those mean for your operations will help to shift focus to where the dollars are. Effectively, it’s the culture of measurement!
Don’t Commission Consultants (yet) - Okay, you may NEED consultants, but let’s be real — an extension of a company is a lot better than a rebuild, which consultants are more likely to suggest. Refine your business and connect the dots when things go astray — you likely have more data than you realize.
Culture by Inertia v. Intention - It’s nice for a company culture to build itself, but it’s more likely that intentional work needs to get done (not all brands can be Starbucks). The key word here is INTENTION. Culture doesn’t grow the way you want it to without active, intentional guidance.
Humans Do the Work and Need Engagement - AI isn’t a replacement, it’s a HUMAN tool, and humans deserve substance. Keep your teams engaged socially and intellectually, and most importantly, keep them happy. Success comes from within. You see engagement in people’s actions, not surveys – when they see the vision and do the work without being asked, THAT is an indicator of your effectiveness.

SKILLSETS:

Master the Mission Statement - Get it, believe it, and execute it. Is your company culture clear enough for the masses? The mission statement can’t stop at a ‘vision exercise.’ It needs to be actionable and definitive in a way that makes your team capable to move the vision forward.
Marketing/Branding at the Strategy Table - As Allison puts it, there’s a perception that CMOs are just the “executives with the crayons,” and a change in branding requires a change in leadership. That’s not necessarily the case. Rather, Marketing as a skillset needs to be brought into the early stages of strategy development — that can only succeed with good, active leadership.
Communication and Participation - Is your CMO a “team player,” or do they have blinders on to meet a singular vision? A good CMO is working with the financial team, data team, and other leadership for a cohesive vision.
Persistence - People may let a financial analysis, for example, go on FOREVER. But when it comes to a marketing campaign, people expect results after a week or two. That is NOT the case; rather, you need to be persistent in your vision in the same way that a salesperson is persistent with their pitch.
Break Down the Doors - Unless you’re making space in work meetings, you won’t get the empathy you need as a team player. ALWAYS get into the board meetings and stay involved.

TOOLSETS:

Corporate Calendar/Google Calendar
Quantitative & Qualitative Data
Team Meetings
Kantar Brandz Report

RESULTS:

One of the very first things the Nymbus CEO did to improve company culture was to make every employee a shareholder. The second thing they did was avoid the glitzy executive hires first. Third, everything from hires to layoffs happened in the public space, making for a tremendously transparent company.

By making every employee a shareholder, workers were given equal value, and thus a reason to care about the solution and the product/service that Nymbus sells. This has put Nymbus in a tremendous sales point that has been both successful and fun, despite any difficulties that come from the financial services industry.

A bit more about Allison:

Allison Netzer is a best-selling author and the Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer for Nymbus, a company dedicated to assisting the banking industry and global financial service organizations with breakthrough banking tech products. Her 2022 book Think Like a Brand, Not a Bank has been praised for its no-nonsense deep dive into the emerging landscape of financial technology. Allison has kept a keen eye on data trends her whole career — one that includes over 20 years of experience helping companies like Aetna, Cisco, Southwest Airlines, and The Dallas Cowboys.

Allison has been lauded as a Top 30 Fintech Marketer AND a Top 25 Global Woman in Fintech.

Connect with Allison:

http://nymbus.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/allison-netzer-1b98335/

Connect with Mike & Gaby @ Proofpoint Marketing:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube

Proofpoint Marketing Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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“Tell me a little more about your business.” It’s a simple request that generates simple answers — 70-90 percent of sales generated come from workers, focused relationships, and referrals. The conversation gets a little trickier with the follow-up questions, particularly this one: “What’s stopping you from accelerating revenue growth?”

This week, we sit down with David Rush, the CEO of SmallWorld for a discussion on the business relationships that drive and generate revenue. What are the misconceptions about referrals, who generates them, how do you start a referral program, and what do they mean for your business?

Let’s get started!

MINDSETS:

Activating Your Employees - When starting a referral program, sometimes the best place to start is your employees. They have relationships with peers from past and current projects, and incentivizing your employees first will set the stage for a referral structure.
Extended Networks of Trust - Workers find jobs often from professional connections. No matter what, though, there is a level of trust that always has to be established before that referral takes place.
Keeping Connections Intact - How do you rate your relationships? Are they strong with multiple referrals to consider, or do they have a weaker extended network? Making connections is important, but establishing and understanding their value is just as crucial.
Keep it Timely - Revenue is important, but time is just as valuable. In building trust, you always have to ensure the work you’re asking a person to put in to review a referral is worth their time. Anything less than a useful referral can feel like time wasted, which has long-term effects on business relationships.

SKILLSETS:

Attention to Detail - Staying in tune with the metrics that work for your business makes for better leadership, and ultimately better workflows for your team.
Accelerating Growth through Active Participation - Leading by example, with the expectation that others will do as you do, produces consistent results across the board that will ensure growth. Ultimately, a team values and trusts a leader that works just as hard at referrals and relationships.
Rate Your Relationships - ‘Relationship leads’ are the actionable, high-conversion referrals that have a lasting impact on your business. But how are they tracked? It depends on the metrics of your business – be it revenue growth, visibility, or both. Setting the stage and ensuring your team effectively tracks data makes for more comprehensive growth.
Nurture Relationships - Programs fail due to one-sided relationships and unmet expectations. Understanding the structure of incentives and regularly updating them not only keeps partners interested… it shows that you value their time.

TOOLSETS:

Referral Programs
Relationship Building
CRM Software
ZoomInfo
LinkedIn
Email
Lead Generation

RESULTS:

For David, referral programs are a crucial component of business growth. In his experience, any sales marketing team needs to look at the size of a pipeline and its quality. When looking into conversion rates, David sees that people will say “yes” to 83% of referrals, and the actual meeting is scheduled about 71% of the time. Compared to other methods (like the dreaded cold outreach), the effectiveness is not only greater, but the meetings take place quicker. In business, weeks are always better than months when it comes to making deals. That type of success doesn’t come without an effective referral system, which David and the team at SmartWorld continue to perfect.

A bit more about David:

David Rush is the CEO of SmallWorld, a company dedicated to unlocking relationships available to companies for warm introductions and referrals and, in doing so, reducing the cost of customer acquisition. David is an entrepreneur in heart and practice, having previously held executive roles at tech companies like Earshot and DialogueTech. David was inspired to develop SmallWorld through a passionate belief that connection drives growth and ultimately has a direct impact on top-line revenue.

Connect with David:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/drush29/
https://www.smallworld.ai/

Connect with Mike & Gaby @ Proofpoint Marketing:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube

Proofpoint Marketing Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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It’s a little bit of everything, all of the time. Content is EVERYWHERE, and for many, it is EVERYTHING. Trends come and go, and millions upon millions of viewers are seeking the next “viral” video. The next “best” thing. If anything’s changed in marketing (or, rather, content creation), it’s that there are more content creators than ever, making for a busy space that keeps on growing. Add Artificial Intelligence into the mix, and you have thousands of hours of content produced DAILY. Exhausting, right?

This week, we sit down with Brian Wallace, the co-founder of NowSourcing, for a discussion on the modern content environment. What happens to consumers when so much content is available? For marketers, what does it take for them to not throw their laptops at a wall and, instead, work to break through the noise? What does it mean for modern content to be not only entertaining but valuable to a consumer?

Let’s get started!

MINDSETS:

Doing the Complete Opposite - If you’re hearing about possible ChatGPT prompts from, say, your Uber Driver — it’s time to consider if you’re either behind on your game, or if EVERYBODY knows the “secrets” to content creation. Pivoting to unchartered territory may be the key to being noticed.
AI is NOT a brain replacement - have you or your company embraced AI? Consider its limitations. For now, it’s better served for menial, repetitive tasks — not as your content producer.
Remember How People Think - A polished, corporate mindset is a trap door. A fully functioning adult may somehow completely forget how humans think in a professional setting. It’s not about “putting on a different shirt,” per se, but rather it’s bringing that shirt to the office and remembering the importance of the human mindset.

SKILLSETS:

The Power to Be Everywhere - People are making decisions about the type of person you are through multiple social and web channels — due diligence causes people to find and review your digital footprint. It’s important to stay ahead of the game, keep a professional presence across the platforms, and stay proactive.
Picking Your Lane - Let’s be honest — you can’t be everywhere, at least not effectively. And if you are, it may come across as inauthentic or, even worse, fraudulent. Choosing channels that make sense to you and your brand plays an important role in your content’s authenticity.
Creativity and Caring - The market, in and of itself, does a terrible job of explaining itself. Why? It fails to make effective connections. As a marketer, you are required to be empathetic in the same way that you have to be an effective creator. Now THAT is something AI can’t be: empathetic.
Effective Hiring - “Fit for Business” and “Fit for Skill” are NOT the same thing. Consider your hiring practices — does a marketer vibe with your mindsets, or are they completely off base? Interpersonal skills should be considered just as strictly as tangible skills.
Understanding Humanity - Look at a company, its marketplace, and its customers … Odds are, the industry isn’t telling the full story of its purpose. Understanding a company’s place in the world ALONGSIDE humanity, as well as humanity’s strongly-held beliefs about any given industry (say, chiropractic) AND truly caring about general human interests, plays a tremendous role in a company’s longevity
Avoiding the Safe Bet - Copying off of someone’s homework was looked down upon in school — why would copying someone’s creative work be looked at better? Unfortunately, people mimic creative styles because it is a familiar, safe bet. It’ll hurt you in the long run.
Remember the Goal of Content - If you’re a content creator, your goal may be to get the most likes, shares, and comments. That’s fine. As a BUSINESS, you cannot forget that content is an aid to revenue growth. Popularity online is not the equivalent of financial success and business longevity. Sure, you’re internet famous, but inflated egos don’t pay the bills.

TOOLSETS:

Infographics
Podcasting
YouTube Videos
Artificial Intelligence (ChatGPT)
Industry Conferences
Blogging
Generosity
Networking
Mastering Your Craft

RESULTS:

As a marketer, you may be inclined to look at vanity metrics as your company’s most successful qualities — in the case of social media, for example, you may see more followers as a success when in reality more followers do NOT equate to more sales. Brian implores you to look deeper than that — two circles of a Venn diagram where you’re either working for a high-profile company or an amazing company that achieves your ideal output. The “middle” of the Venn diagram is the sweet spot - amazing companies that do amazing things.

Brian looks to the story of Moneyball as a great example. Scouts, at one point in time, sought out players that “looked the part.” The flaw with that is, while a person may look like a baseball player, they lack all the necessary fundamentals to succeed, meaning the team as a unit was destined for failure. The same applies to marketing. It is A LOT more scrappy. Data isn’t always pretty, but it is necessary for forecasting and success. Effectively, Brian works to break through the noisy, busy content spaces by implementing processes that look past vanity numbers and flashy data for content that is effective, useful, and relevant.

A bit more about Brian:

Brian Wallace, the co-founder of NowSourcing, an infographic design agency with offices in Kentucky and Ohio. NowSourcing’s vast portfolio sees them assisting businesses ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies.

Brian’s focused mindset has garnered him accolades from the likes of Google, which has named him a top Small Business Advisor since 2016.

Connect with Brian:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nowsourcing/
https://twitter.com/nowsourcing

Connect with Mike & Gaby @ Proofpoint Marketing:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube

Proofpoint Marketing Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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In this POV episode, we revisit "Ep. 21 Ryan Gibson - Customer Research Drives Revenue Growth" to explore even deeper insights to engage with in the B2B marketing space.

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Not everything we do as marketers sticks the landing on the first go. In fact, it often fails, which is what makes this work so compelling and diverse. In this week’s episode, we welcome guest Corey Brown, current Head of Marketing at risk3sixty, for an eye-opening chat on the “power of the pivot”, and the opportunities that reveal themselves when we can accurately read the story behind the data and change up our strategy to meet our unique business goals. According to Corey, the key to success at every step is to operationalize your marketing objectives so that they can meet your equally essential business goals in order to make a real difference in results.

Let’s get started!

MINDSETS:

Diversify your investments in time, money, and energy - don’t put all of your eggs in one basket, assess progress for a project or activation with a cross-comparative eye,
“Diversity/flexibility mindset” without spreading yourself too thin - you should still be focusing on niche skills or specializations, but not so much that you back yourself (and your team) into a corner. Be cautious about taking on new channels or tools, and do so with humility and an expectation that you’ll need to pivot after initial data comes to light.
Assess, reassess, test, re-test - of course you don’t want to invest huge amounts of dollars or time into something without a track record or clear lead generation attached.
Balance mindset - have a birds eye view of how the story the analytics is telling you translates into your business data and goals. Every idea you have, informed by platform and engagement analytics, MUST ultimately serve your ultimate business trajectory.
"5-3-2 mindset" - Corey employs this mindset strategy to balance his time across major priority areas. For Corey, he guides his team to put its energy towards content areas of varying number depending on priority: (5) topical industry content, (3), promotional content, (2) fun & new content. This scale model itself is scalable, and can be adapted to suit your specific needs.

SKILLSETS:

Data analysis & manipulation - you can’t argue with numbers, right?
Interpersonal communication - be able to effectively converse using logic and emotion amongst diverse team members (with diverse skills and personalities).
Ability to operationalize & define your unique data inflection points - this makes your assessment of the data much more purposeful and efficient. It also allows you to pick tools that will help you with your specific data analytics needs. Understanding your analytics from all angles and platforms gives you an edge in the game.
Ability to see the gaps in your department’s operations.

TOOLSETS:

Email campaigns
YouTube analytics
Your own version of Corey’s “Delegation Chart” and “Operation Chart” (we love this)
Weekly team-wide meetings & one-to-one team member meetings
“SMART” Goals

RESULTS:

A team-wide decision to pivot from podcast strategy to webinar production, which has led to 4 successful webinar sessions that have generated 5x the amount of new leads, as well as massive growth in pipeline.

A bit more about Corey:

Corey is currently the Head of Marketing at risk3sixty, which supports clients in the construction, management and certification of business-first security and other compliance-based programs. For more than a decade, Corey has worked in a diverse set of roles from web and digital art design to B2B content strategy and management. With a proven track record of developing and executing integrated marketing and communications plans from end-to-end, Corey is a meticulous project manager, balancing highly analytical and deeply creative approaches in his work.

Connect with Corey:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ckbrown81/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/risk3sixty/

Connect with Mike & Gaby @ Proofpoint Marketing:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Marketing Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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Let’s talk $$$.

When you have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend (so, lots of $$$), even on work as multi-faceted and demanding as marketing, it’s easy to get comfortable throwing large chunks of change at various ideas and seeing what “works”. But as this week’s guest, the multi-talented Adam Shaw, will tell you, it’s easy to slip into a lazy mindset when the wallet is too heavy. Now the Head of Demand Generation at WeSpire, Adam leads a much smaller team with a lean media budget. And it's precisely the challenges of this downsized budget that have made him and his modest team more creative and resilient marketers.

In this episode, join us for a case study in making the most of the tools in front of you … and, of course, the talented people at your side.

MINDSETS:

“Tinkerer” mindset - always be on the lookout for something that can be improved, tweaked, developed further in any project or campaign. Oftentimes, it’s having this attention to detail that can help you maximize a slim budget.
- If you’re in a leadership position, look for the tinkerers on your team and leverage their skills by putting them on projects suited to their interests!
Wear all the hats - in smaller teams, you may be expected to do the job of what would be four different specialized roles in a big agency. Account manager, content strategist, content creator… having the mindset of all three takes you much further.
Leadership mindset - let your team members do what they’re passionate about.
Focus on optimizing the “bottom least-efficient 10%” of your job. Doing this will allow you to carve out a workflow that is much more efficient.

SKILLSETS:

In a leadership position, being able to build a culture where team members are encouraged to pushback, question, and take the lead on ideas they’re passionate about.
Being an “Excel nutcase”- as Adam says, at some point during your career, be the one to enter the data into an Excel spreadsheet. In other words, gaining the experience of doing the data “grunt work” gives you a holistic perspective when you do work in other roles such as management.
Leaning on the resource you have in front of you - don’t over rely on outsourcing. In small teams, no one can afford to be anything less than super talented. Leverage both the talents and strengths of those around you.
Knowing in detail the buyer journey for your customers - Adam emphasizes that this comes with time and experience. But pursue opportunities that let you learn more about your customers and what drives them. Extensive knowledge of the buyer journey should inform every move you make.
Maximizing output by prioritizing evergreen content.
Being a good educator - especially with small budgets, it’s essential as a manager/leader to educate your team members on the overall structure of the business model they are working in.

TOOLSETS:

Excel (here’s to you, “Excel freaks”) 🤓
Semrush (a must-have according to Adam)
Canva
SQL
Python
Notion
Adobe Photoshop
Miro

RESULTS:

An acceleratedpipeline that has allowed the team to more efficiently apply dollars to both paid and organic campaigns much earlier in the buying cycle process.

A bit more about Adam:

Adam Shaw is the current Head of Demand Generation at WeSpire. An expert on all sorts of marketing subjects, such as paid media, growth marketing, tech marketing, SaaS marketing, and more, Adam describes himself best as, “[A] demand generation nerd who obsesses over strategy and details.” Outside of work, Adam is a triathlete and newly certified sommelier.

Connect with Adam:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-shaw-stl/
https://www.wespire.com/

Connect with Mike & Gaby @ Proofpoint Marketing:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Marketing Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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What’s one of the buzziest buzzwords in marketing right now? C’mon… you got this… yeah. “Storytelling”. 🙄 The term has become ubiquitous in the B2B space but what does it really mean? This week, Content Marketing Manager Winona Rajamohan explains why “storytelling” itself is not a strong enough strategy for your content. Too many brands put themselves at the center of the narrative, but Winona says it's time to make it about your customers’ specific experiences.

In this episode, Winona discusses the mindsets, toolsets and skillsets that go into content repurposing, and what the newsroom taught her about marketing.

MINDSETS:

Re-conceptualize your strategy as a “content machine”, one that constantly repurposes what you put out there so that your content remains relevant and evergreen. Thinking this way can help you to:
- Prioritize/categorize stories that are top of mind
- Engage with shorter form pieces that can be expanded depending on current events/what is generating buzz
- Be more economical & targeted with your story development
Be intentional and focus on writing content that always ties back to your brand’s mission, no matter how niche or “small” a particular story is. This will result in a content pool that is rooted in your big picture narrative. New customers should be able to see common themes that run through your content.
Don’t create in a vacuum. Bounce ideas of colleagues and other members of your team to keep yourself in check and to communicate ideas across departments. To Winona’s point, “the content marketer can’t do everything themselves”. Lean in on internal SMEs as guidance to shaping more purposeful, economic content that serves your big picture.
Think like a journalist. Great stories require great sources. Vetting proper sources and using them to shape your narratives will generate powerful, “newsworthy” stories. ALWAYS show your audience how timely a story is to generate lasting impressions.

SKILLSETS:

The ability to look at a story from several different angles (like a journalist) is key to both creating content that can be effectively repurposed down the line, but it also allows you to swiftly pivot in your approach to a particular piece of content, sometimes landing on something even better than what you first imagined.
Navigating customer research without relying too heavily on your pre-planned surveys/templates can lead to enduring insights about your customers. According to Winona, being able to know when to wander “off script” in a particular interaction can help build richer, more genuine connections with people. It also diversifies your interview and other research-based prep materials to inform that next major piece of content!
Being a good listener, not just a good interviewer. Asking questions is important, but the ability to deeply digest a customer’s responses can help you tap into the nature of their needs and engage with the story of how they found you.
Ideation & distribution - you don’t just need to be able to come up with good ideas, but understand how these ideas can be distributed across a variety of platforms, channels and forms. You need to be resourceful about the stories you’ve developed and maximize each one to suit your goals. Don’t forget: if a story simply isn’t working, give yourself permission to walk away!

TOOLSETS:

Google Docs & Spreadsheets (color coding is your best friend!)
Google Analytics
Notion.so
Canva
SparkToro
HeyDay (Google Chrome extension)

RESULTS:

A successful webinar based on a previous customer case study that greatly increased traffic, as well as giving a huge boost to pipeline with tons of new, diverse leads.

A bit more about Winona:

Winona Rajamohan is the current Content Marketing Manager at Smartcar, an API platform for cars with built-in Internet capabilities. She describes herself as a creative writer, trained as a journalist, mentored by marketers. As an experienced runner in the newsroom race against the clock, Winona has been an essential early marketing hire at tech startups. Before her work with Smartcar, Winona previously built HireEz’s content and webinar program, and published a debut fiction novel along the way.

Connect with Winona:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/winonarajamohan/
https://smartcar.com/

Connect with Mike & Gaby @ Proofpoint Marketing:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Marketing Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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Negotiation seems to be a lost art these days. CEO of Negotiations Ninja Mark Raffan uses an array of negotiation tactics in his approach to marketing, and to say he’s been successful at it is… an understatement. In this episode, Mark, a prolific content creator and strategist, introduces us to the negotiation processes and concepts that not just lead to great projects, but robust, enduring relationships with other professionals and creatives. In fact, many of the pleasant surprises that arise in our work are the result of engaging in compromise when the moment calls for it.

MINDSETS:

Contextualize risk - compromise is not created equal. In a hostage situation, negotiations can’t afford to play so fast and loose with the give and take of it all, not with human lives at stake. But luckily, this is marketing, and great marketing often requires a dynamic, carefully agreed-upon compromise. A bit of pain for the sake of the end game, if you will.
Intent is everything - check your ethics. Negotiation does NOT equal manipulation. Having a nuanced, well-balanced discussion requires a mutual respect between parties and a mindset geared toward creation and teambuilding.
Understand the logic AND emotion - human beings make decisions based on both, and persuading a prospective client requires that you’ve not only presented such a choice as both the most logical for them and their leadership, but that you’ve appealed to their emotions in key ways.
Stop trying to time the market - just like in finance, you can’t possibly time everything correctly all the time. Don’t drive yourself crazy. As Mark says, you have to be “on all the time”, focus on your slower-burning, more emotionally enduring brand marketing just as much as your more exciting, higher energy performance marketing strategies. That way you’re more than ready to crush it when good timing finds you.
Reacting vs responding - in negotiation just as in marketing, it’s a common mistake to react to every change the market throws at us. But if you’ve prepped well, you should be responding to potential outcomes as a result of said preparation. Reacting to every new story about the market is dangerous territory because it means we’re making “costly decisions based on assumptions”... assumptions that we often haven’t verified.

SKILLSETS:

Customer research backed-by robust questions - asking the right questions will give you the right data! Asking lazy, leading questions is a huge impediment to making real progress in understanding your customers.
- Nurturing your curiosity may be the most important thing you can do as a marketer.
- Make sure you're getting the right answers to your questions. If a customer didn’t give you a response that truly answers the dimensions of your question, ask again or rephrase your inquiry. If not, you’re only operating off of assumptions.
Verify any and all assumptions - we live in a world where we can get a plethora of information by tapping a screen. Having the skill to understand your assumptions, pick them apart, and then verify them by making use of the myriad research resources available to us in the modern age is essential to grow as a successful marketer (and negotiator!)

TOOLSETS:

Diverse negotiation ideologies/practice sets (getting too hooked on one strategy leads to a dogmatization of one approach over the other… this can severely limit you.)
Classic SEO
Door-to-door/direct mail marketing (yes, it still works in the proper contexts!)

RESULTS:

A successful podcast (Negotiations Ninja) that continues to build authority and credibility in the industry, and connects Mark’s company to pivotal leaders in the marketing space.

Proofpoint’s POV:
One of the most interesting parts of this conversation was the discussion about ethics. Manipulation seems to have become synonymous with marketing, at least in the eyes of the consumer. People have become so used to clickbait, bait and switching, and other tactics that take advantage of what we know about human behavior that most of us are naturally skeptical and assume we are being manipulated. The same is true with sales.

There is a reason why buyer behavior has drastically shifted to where people go to their peers and communities for recommendations instead of search engines and review sites. Most of us know that the latter can be manipulated, while our peers will generally give their honest opinion.

This has always been the case to a certain extent - word of mouth has always been the best performing form of marketing, but it has historically been hard to come by in B2B. But that has changed over the past 7 years.

This is why we are so gung ho about relationships and Relationship Velocity(TM). Building genuine relationships throughout your ICP and target accounts, is the best way to give yourself a leg up in your negotiations.

A bit more about Mark:

Mark Raffan is the CEO of Negotiations Ninja and a successful host of their podcast where he hosts “negotiation experts, business people, and entrepreneurs from all walks of life and discusses which negotiation tactics work, which don't work and how we can improve our negotiation skills.” Mark is a prolific content creator and regularly explores the art of persuasion, sales, and procurement.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Connect with Mark:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/markraffan/
- https://www.negotiations.ninja/

Connect with Mike & Gaby @ Proofpoint Marketing:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Marketing Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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In a conversation that’s been a year in the making, Nick Bennett of Alyce breaks down his philosophy on all things “personal brand” - what it really means, why it’s crucial, and how it’s made him a top content creator on LinkedIn. For Nick, it’s all about centering what you create in the human element. Get personal. An audience invested in YOU as a human being and not just what tips you can offer is much more willing to engage with your brand in meaningful ways that go far beyond the “Like” button.

MINDSETS:

Clarity - have a CLEAR goal and vision beyond your target audience. Focus on your niche. This can take time, be patient with yourself. Feel free to experiment and you'll find a little self-reflection can lead to big insights.
The human element - “Your story matters.” Get personal! Vulnerability and deeper connection to a human story can lead to robust, sustainable relationships. As a creator, living your truth and being your authentic self generates meaningful content (but as Nick says, not everyone will like what you put there… and that’s OK).
Gear up for the down side - attitude in the face of adversity. At times, life doesn’t seem to like our plans. Learn to embrace the unexpected and prepare for when things inevitably go wrong. Overnight hacks are a myth. The best things take time to build. And what’s one of the best things to build, according to Nick? Community.
Leave your legacy - go beyond reputation. People should remember who you are. Also, it’s ok to evolve. In fact, it’s crucial. Just be open and purposeful along the way. Your identity is never set in stone.

SKILLSETS:

Sharpen your ICPs - really understanding the various niches within the marketing space that you want to target generates faster leads.
Tie your content to the larger story of you - sounds simple, right? But the real “work” involves the ability to tie every piece of content you make to a larger picture. Viewed within this larger context of who you are as a brand, your audience sees you as a nuanced human being with a compelling story.
Personal branding is all the rage - more than ever, marketers and creators who can masterfully carve out a space as a personal brand have the edge.
Curate your network, curate your social feed - anyone can accept every LinkedIn invite that comes their way. But this leads to a messy, clogged feed. The most successful creators are strategic about their connections. Doing this ensures that your audience returns to your feed to learn about YOU as a person, not just because you offer sound marketing advice.

TOOLSETS:

“5 Minute Rule” (a Nick Bennett special)
Shield
LinkedIn

RESULTS:

3% month-over-month growth for Alyce’s LinkedIn presence
A new Evangelism-based program internally at Alyce focused on personal branding for its employees… This leads to literally millions of impressions for the agency.
A company-wide event focused on personal branding which generated nearly 4 million organic views on LinkedIn in just a month.

A bit more about Nick:

Nick is the Director of Evangelism & Customer Marketing at Alyce. Voted as one of LinkedIn's top 100 creators, Nick shares his experiences with personal branding and customer marketing daily on LinkedIn and TikTok. A skilled speaker and creator, Nick is constantly exploring how B2B buyers make decisions today and applies his learnings as host of his own show, Rep Your Brand, one of the world’s top 10% most popular podcasts.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Connect with Nick @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickbennett1/

Connect with Mike & Gaby @ Proofpoint Marketing:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube

Proofpoint Marketing Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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In a sea of marketing agencies, or many other service providers for that matter, the most common value prop is “we won’t screw you over” or “we actually do what we say we are going to”. Neither of these is a great way to go-to-market. What is a great way, you ask?

Do something large and make yourself known for being an expert in something. This is exactly what Mason Cosby did with the ABM-athon at Mojo Media Labs.

MINDSETS:

Abundance mindset - give away your best content and ideas because there are plenty of fish in the sea - it’s about maximizing engagement and content consumption from the right people rather than worrying about giving things away for free.
What do you want to be known for?
Flip the script, and control the narrative - focus on owning the conversation instead of renting attention from others.
Have a longer time horizon when evaluating your major investments in things like events. The revenue will come later.
Focus on content and promotion, not fancy tech to start with
Think through what you want to learn from the initial test up front, and design the measurement around those things.

SKILLSETS:

People management is key - you need to know how to handle different personalities who are contributing to the event. Your job is to make them feel good about spending their time on this and feel valued.
You need to be a good content and copywriter - you will inevitably need to create all the assets for promotion of the event, and also possibly for some of the speakers.
Understanding of marketing technology and how to make them all work together.
Customer research - understand what content your customers actually care about so you can create content they will show up to see. Consider surveying your existing customers about what they want.

TOOLSETS:

Zoom Events
HubSpot
LinkedIn (organic and paid ads)
SalesIntel - for building target account lists
Sendoso - for swag and thankyou gifts
Veed.io - for video editing

RESULTS:

Mason’s event was about to generate the following results:
1.1 million impressions within the marketing suite of their 1000 target accounts
700 registrants
300 attendees
4 deals influenced
2 deals sourced
15 deals sighted the event as part of what convinced them to move forward

Oh, and by the way, the event helped Gravity Global evaluate the entire team as part of the acquisition. Mojo Media Labs is now owned by, and is the center of excellence for ABM at Gravity Global.

Proofpoint’s POV:

There are two major shifts happening in the marketing landscape that we touched on during this episode, and are worthwhile to highlight and elaborate on further.

Brands owning the conversation. A concept we always talk to our clients about is “followers are rented, audiences are shared, community is owned.” Community is what allows you to own the conversation about your area of expertise. And a major event is a great way to build community. Mason even gave the cost comparison example where it can cost you $15k to have a 30-minute speaking engagement at a conference, or you can spend $23k to put on your own event. Now obviously this comes with a risk - you could screw it up and maybe people don’t show up or have a bad experience, but the simple unit economics are definitely in your favor here.

Creators and their personal brands are driving B2B brand growth. Companies are hiring creators internally to be growth levers and actual growth leaders for the organization. B2B organizations are also turning to influencer marketing—something that B2C brands have been doing for decades—more and more. And employee advocacy/engagement programs are popping up all over the place—though many not very effectively—but that’s a story for another time.

This conversation showed how effective a single personal brand can be at driving impact (in this case event attendance and resulting revenue) and how leveraging partners and associating your brand with other industry leaders can do wonders for the status your company takes in the eyes of the target audience.

A bit more about Mason:
Mason is the Director of Growth for Gravity Global and the host of The Marketing Ladder podcast, where he interviews marketing leaders to learn how they built their careers. And as part of his podcasting effort, he also helps tons of marketers find their next job opportunity.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Connect with Mason on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/masoncosby/

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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Getting interviewed on podcasts is just as impactful, if not more, as guest blogging was in 2015. You can drive tangible business impact through strategic outreach. This For this episode, we had Mark Colgan on the show, to talk about how to choose the right podcasts to speak on, how to reach out to their hosts, and the impact it can have on your business if you do this well.

Mindsets:

It’s not just podcasts - think about how you can get your brand in front of the people you can help.
Use your gut - if it feels like the right thing to do, then do it, even if you can’t 100% attribute the success
Focus on building relationships, rather than pitching. Podcasting is an evergreen play, and compounds over time.

Skillsets:

Research
- Who else is talking to my audience? Who else is selling the same or similar product? Who is selling a service or product adjacent to yours?
- Who is speaking at industry events?
- Where are your competitors speaking?
Copywriting
- Deep personalization is the key, just like in sales outreach.
- Keep it short
- Be different
Admin and follow-up. No different than tracking sales pipeline activity, you should be tracking your podcast outreach and follow-up activity.
Set your speaker up for success
- Run a practice interview
- Have a clear CTA rehearsed

Toolsets:

ListenNotes
SparkToro
Airtable for tracking activity
Separate domain for sending emails, just in case your outreach emails get flagged as spam
Rephonic

Results:

Personalized outreach can get you get you an outreach reply rate as high as 70%.

And actually being interviewed on podcasts can drive sales activity, especially if you are focusing on smaller niche podcasts for the exact audience you are looking to get in front of. Some sample results that Mark shared from his clients:

Over 50% of new signups for a coaching client
SaaS company closed their largest deals from the host themselves

Proofpoint’s POV:

We love podcasts here at Proofpoint. We have even created shows for a number of our clients. We also love being on other people’s podcast - It’s fun!

That said, even I walked away with some new things to try after this conversation. It makes complete sense to treat your podcast outreach like you would high ticket sales outreach. Focus on building a relationship first.

The rigor that Mark describes for doing the research, crafting the message and building a repeatable process is an absolute master class in how to do this, and we will definitely be implementing some of these lessons as we try to speak on more podcasts.

A bit more about Mark:

Mark is the second guest in a row who lives in Spain. He is a long-time sales leader, who actually used his cold outbound skills to cold pitch his girlfriend on Instagram. Watch till the end to hear the story.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Connect with Mark on https://www.linkedin.com/in/markcolganmarketing/

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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SEO is a fairly broad topic, but at the end of the day, whether we are optimizing for site speed or writing content, there should always be some sort of business objective driving the activity. We sat down with Maeva Cinfuentes of Flying Cat Marketing to talk about how SEO success needs to be evaluated based on the revenue it drives, not simply the traffic it brings in.

Mindsets:

You need to change the KPIs - it’s not about traffic and rankings.
Don’t expect someone who charges by the word who you hired to write a blog post for $100, to have the time to interview SMEs and create really relevant content for your audience
SEO is a channel, not a strategy

Skillsets:

Teach your writers to be journalists, so they can get the best, and most relevant content from the SMEs, especially in technical industries
Learn how to select the right topics - you need to listen and know how to ask the right questions to understand your audience.
Networking - your network will be extremely important so you can do your research. This means not only building your network, but also nurturing that network so when you reach out for a favor (to interview them) they are more likely to respond.
Unlearn all your “SEO writing” skills. Don’t write for the bots, but for the target audience. The Skyscraper technique doesn’t make sense for every single topic and every single reader.
Understand and measure content consumption
The headline should tell a story
BLUF - bottom line up front - if they want to keep reading, they will

Toolsets:

Ahrefs
Clearscope
ClickUp
Google Search Console
Google Analytics

Results:

400% increase in traffic… and revenue!

CTA language optimized for the topic and the search intent of the keyword being optimized for and focusing on high purchase intent long-tail keywords.

Proofpoint’s POV:

What gets measured gets managed. The downside to this, is if you measure the wrong things, you will manage the wrong things. Just as true with SEO as any other marketing channel.

If you measure traffic and rankings, or even leads, then that is what you will manage your SEO program to. Unfortunately, it is way too easy to drive high volumes of traffic. Sometimes you may even do it by accident.

Have you ever looked at your Google Search Console report and find one of your case studies ranking for something irrelevant about your client? Happens all the time. But that is almost never valuable traffic.

You can also spend all your effort going after the broad, high volume keyword. My favorite example from a former client… “what is erp”. Yet when you are selling to enterprise buyers, it isn’t terribly likely that they don’t know what an ERP system is.

We also often see this with professional services companies. They will optimize for a variety of “what is + [acronym]” searches, but it isn’t likely their prospective customers will be looking for those definitions.

Another really important thing to call out here, is to not trust everything the SEO tools tell you. Just because something seems like it has zero search volume, doesn’t mean it actually has zero search volume. We have built entire programs out of only going after zero search volume keywords.

Similarly, be very careful with how much trust you put in Google Search Console data. A recent analysis by Ahrefs showed that on average a site could be missing around 50% of it’s traffic data in GSC.

A bit more about Maeva:

Maeva is a polyglot who has been living in Spain for quite some time. She loves improv theater and hopes to do some clowning one day.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Connect with Maeva on https://www.linkedin.com/in/maevaeverywhere/

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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As a small team, you are often competing against much larger and more well funded teams. This is especially true in terms of content. Leveraging a podcast as a foundational asset can be a very efficient way to feed a variety of content types.

We will talk with James Furbush about what mindsets, skillsets, and toolsets needed to build and execute a content strategy with a small team and minimal budget, to drive significant results.

Mindsets:

Don’t let perfect get in the way of the good - just get started
Take your time to get people onboard with major mindshift projects
Set clear expectations upfront
Work parallel work streams to both capture demand that exists and deliver quick wins for sales, while you work on building net new demand
Focus on creating a content engine, not just individual pieces of content

Skillsets:

Learn to be a journalist to effectively ask questions to capture quality content
You need to get your reps in. Nobody wakes up and knows how to be a great interviewer
Nurture and leverage your network to build your initial guest pipeline
Building a guest pipeline is no different than managing a sales pipeline
Focus on the guest experience - how do you make them feel good about being involved?

Toolsets:

Riverside.fm - this episode was recorded on Streamyard, but we have since switched to Riverside as well.
Descript - we actually use Descript a ton for quick and dirty videos even though our podcast is professionally post-produced.
Canva for creative templates (including video templates)

Results:

The company James works for was recently acquired, and the podcast helped build their brand presence.

Proofpoint’s POV:

We have talked about the value of podcasts with several guests in the past (Jason Bradwell, and our very own James Ricks before he became a Proofpointer 😁) and obviously we are all about it ourselves as the podcast is our core content engine.

That said, something we didn’t get into the weeds enough with James here, are the various ways a podcast can be leveraged and worked into your overall marketing strategy, so here they are:

Partnerships

Have target reseller/channel partners as guest or co-hosts of your show
Have software/integration partners as guests or co-hosts of your show
Repurpose partner webinars as podcast episodes
Have target influencers as guests on the show

ABM

Invite people from your target accounts to be guests on the show, and then use the guest experience as a way to create more touchpoints and a better relationship
Use target guest episodes as ways to get in front of similar target accounts (e.g. by region)
Demand Generation
- Interview internal SMEs to promote your POV, build your category, and show your expertise
- Promote internal SME interviews to target accounts via paid ads
- Turn episode recaps and show notes into SEO-optimized content. Research top searched questions and tailor your interviews to answer them.
Sales Enablement
- Give your BDRs a different outbound playbook to run - invite guests to the show
- Show BDRs and AEs how to leverage episode content in their outreach and follow-ups
- Have some AEs on the show as SMEs, so they can get their names and faces out there as experts in the field/industry

Bonus:

If you want to hear us talk about parenting successes (and fails) and reminisce about how our kids don’t get how we did things “back in the day”, stick around till the lightning round at the end of the episode.

A bit more about James:

James is a former journalist and staff writer, turned content marketer and marketing leader. He is currently the VP of Marketing at AccessOne. He is a craft beer and single source pour over coffee connoisseur, though he won’t judge you for drinking Dunkin Donuts coffee or a Bud Light.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Connect with James on LinkedIn
Check out the AccessOne podcast

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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Know your customer!

This is something we hear all the time, but in most cases we don’t define what this really means or how to effectively do it. In this episode, we dive deep into how to conduct customer research, with Ryan Paul Gibson of Content Lift, and talk about how asking the right people the right questions can have a major revenue impact for your business.

We will talk about what mindsets, skillsets, and toolsets needed to conduct effective customer research, to drive results. This episode is literally a masterclass in customer research, so if you want to learn how to gain insights from talking to customers, don’t miss a minute of this awesome conversation.

Mindsets:

[2:00 - 6:00] Be inquisitive, like a reporter - Ask yourself “what are some of your assumptions that might be wrong?”
[8:43 - 12:30] Find the root cause, don’t just treat the symptom.
[12:40 - 14:00] Be self-aware - you are probably at least partially the cause of the issue which you are trying to research.

Skillsets:

[14:30 - 16:30] Ask one question at a time - no compound questions.
[18:40 - 24:30] Have a hypothesis to test (e.g. are we talking to the wrong people?) and use that to drive organic discovery.
[30:00 - 37:00] Active listening - do your prep and slow your speech down to force your brain to slow down and actually listen.
[38:08 - ] Codifying subjective language - find themes and trends in the responses to your questions

Toolsets [42:44 - 49:40]:

Transcription - Reduct Video or Rev.io
Scheduler
Video recording - Zoom - record everything because you won’t remember
Google Docs

Results:

Through all this work, Ryan’s client Rewind was able to double installs.

Proofpoint’s POV:

We at Proofpoint are all about customer research. It is at the very core of our entire process, and is one of the first things we do upon engaging with a client. The goal is to understand what job your customers are trying to do - what their success milestones are, what their pain points are, what their emotional needs are, what their decision making process is like, and what their research process is like.

What’s important first though, is to understand who you should be talking to. We recommend first identifying your best customers and your worst customers via firmographic data in your CRM. This allows you to build your hypothesis, as Ryan recommends, and then better understand what you do well, what you don’t do well, and what you can do about it.

As we talked about with Ryan, personas tend to get a bar rap, but this is because most personas stop at basic demographic and firmographic information. What we advise is to build your personas not just around the information in your CRM, but combine that with first-person customer research.

A bit more about Ryan:

Ryan is a former field researcher and reporter, turned customer research whiz. He hails from Ottawa, Canada, which means yes, he has that awesome Canadian accent, eh! 😁

Helpful Links & Resources:

Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn
Check out Ryan’s one and only case study

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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Is there a single CEO or sales leader out there who wouldn’t want to see their sellers hit 160% of quota? Well that’s exactly what SAP, a client of Seismic’s was able to achieve by going all in on social selling. Steve is the Director of Marketing for Seismic, which is why we are talking about this amazing case study. Amongst other things, Steve lives and breathes social selling and personal branding himself and specifically calls it buyer-centric social selling, which you can learn more about in this episode.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

The mindsets, skillsets and toolsets you will need to build a successful personal brand and be successful at social selling.
What metrics you should be looking at as it pertains to personal branding and social selling.
How to build credibility by SHOWING to your prospective customers that you have walked many miles in their shoes.
What the difference is between personal branding, thought leadership and social selling.
Why relevancy is the most important thing in personal branding and social selling, and how to build relevancy.
How to build your personal content strategy.

Steve’s recommendations:

Think of LinkedIn as a giant ongoing business conversation.
Make sure you aren’t just counting the wins, but also the losses.
How much better active social sellers perform compared to their non-active counterparts
Social Selling isn't about fixing broken companies, it's a way to help already successful ones get even better.
The qualitative data - the individual success stories are often the most direct way to measure success and evaluate performance... and it helps to incentivize and encourage others to get on board.
The labels don't necessarily matter. What matters is the opportunity and the mindsets, skillsets and toolsets.
The best sellers have been marketers and the best marketers have been sellers at some point in their careers. Also the best sellers have been buyers.

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

Steve is looking forward to testing out more personalized video in social selling.
Steve can’t stand all the cliche prospecting messages that we have all likely grown to hate over the past several years (e.g. “how are you doing in these unprecedented times?”). Many more examples mentioned in the episode if you need a good laugh.

Proofpoint’s POV:

We at Proofpoint are all in on personal branding and social selling. The majority of our business has been built via those efforts, and we are now building out training courses for our clients and the community at large.

Marketing is changing. Corporate brands are being built on the backs of employee personal brands, and we are really starting to see the emergence of the “employee influencer”. Interestingly, SaaS companies are the ones leading the charge here, with organizations like Gong, Dooly, Alyce and of course Seismic taking it to the next level. What’s interesting is these organizations are selling products. Yet when we look at service companies, whose entire business model is built on personal relationships, and most of them are still following the old playbooks. The only caveat is marketing agencies 😁.

Think about consulting companies, engineering firms, architecture firms, etc. These are organizations that should be maximizing the already built-in personal relationships and presence of their employees, by empowering, enabling and training them to build their personal brands, and show their thought leadership.

As sales and marketing evolve over the coming years, we will see the two disciplines blend and overlap more and more. The best sales people will have to become great marketers and the best marketers will have to become great salespeople.

Sales people will need to build their personal brands and show their thought leadership in the field/industry they are in. They will need to understand content strategy, and will need to become good copywriters and content creators. Marketers will need to understand the psychology of their buyers - their ICP - and be able to create content that sells.

A bit more about Steve:

Steve is the former VP of Marketing for Grapevine6 which was acquired by Seismic. He is a big hockey fan - not surprising since he hails from Toronto, and he lives and breathes personal branding. You can find him poignantly opining about it on LinkedIn.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Connect with Steve on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevewatt/
Follow Seismic on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/seismic/

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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Want to increase your inbound revenue by 70% next year? Then you may want to listen to this conversation with Jonathan Morgan, the Director of Sales and Marketing Ops at AchieveIt. To do this, they were able to increase contract values by 30% and increase close rates by over 25%. Notice we haven’t mentioned anything about MQLs here.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

How to come balance revenue ops and marketing
How to continuously give to your customers
How to simplify goals and metric reporting for marketing
How to adapt your go-to-market strategy and demand gen playbook when going into a new industry
What marketing metrics should you be tracking (if you are in SaaS)
What the core fundamentals are to be a good marketer
How to work with your finance team as a marketer

Jonathan’s recommendations:

Start by talking to your customers when coming into a new role
Find ways to surprise and delight your customers in your marketing
Enable a strong, trusting community with your customers through things like webinars
First understand your business and your sales & marketing resources before you make any changes to your marketing
Focus on demand capture optimization first before you focus on demand generation activities
Rather than focusing on contact info capture, focus on understanding what your customers are actually doing on your site
Don’t forget to get your sales team onboard before you switch your marketing model
Focus on ways for marketing to give credit, rather than take credit

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

Jonathan hates the term “growth hacking”, which is music to my ears. I hate this term as well.
For any revenue focused folks out there, take a listen to the Revenue Architect podcast which was highly recommended to Jonathan

Proofpoint’s POV:

The most successful marketers out there have a unique combination of skills. Some are great at copywriting and technical SEO. Some are great at analytics and strategy. Others are great at creative and paid media. But more than any of these tactical skills, adding business knowledge and acumen as a layer is what makes a good marketer into a great marketer.

The shift is happening where marketing is being seen more and more as a revenue generator, and as this happens, the marketing leaders that get a seat at the table are those who are good business people first, and great marketers second. CMOs need to be just shepherds of the P&L just as much as CFOs.

Marketers need to understand how the business is funded. They need to understand how the business makes money. They need to understand what the strategic business priorities are at any given time, and why they are the priorities. Marketing strategy then needs to be built to support and reflect this knowledge.

As Jonathan described in our conversation, understanding things like CAC payback period is crucial if you are not a VC backed business because your business will thrive or die based on cash flow. We also had a similar conversation with Garrio Harrison back in episode 11.

So if you are a marketer coming into a new organization, or if you have been in with your current org for a while and are trying to get a seat at the table, do yourself a favor and work to understand the business first. Then you can go about shifting your and your organization’s mindset about the value that marketing can bring. Shifting the mindset from marketing being a cost center, to a profit center is key, and the best way to do that is to shift how marketing is measured. Shifting to measuring marketing based on pipeline and revenue generated is what needs to happen.

A bit more about Jonathan:

Jonathan started in civil engineering, moved into management consulting, and then finally came into his current company as a customer success strategist, and finally moving into revops and marketing over the past few years.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-d-morgan/
FollowAchieveIt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/achieveit/

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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Content repurposing. Everyone is talking about it. I think we all understand the general concept: Create content in one format and then chop it up into micro content in a variety of other formats. The details of how to do this are a bit more elusive. We talked to Ben Reese about this a few episodes back, and now you can listen to how Camille Trent and her team executed a similar strategy, repurposing webinar content, with an extra layer of paid media video ad distribution, to generate hundreds of high intent leads for Marketer Hire (NOTE: she is now the head of content at Dooly, but this case study was too good to pass up).

What you’ll learn in this episode:

How to create your pillar strategy - what niche you want your content to focus on.
The logistics to running a webinar and how to repurpose them into ad content.
What types of headlines work well for ads
How often to refresh your ad content
How many people do you need to execute this content repurposing playbook (hint: it’s not as many as you think)

Camille’s recommendations:

Your business model should drive your lead funnel and lead form strategy.
Give people the content and context so that they can make their decision.
You don’t need any fancy tech to run quality webinars
Post content organically first, before putting money behind it in ads (NOTE: This only works if your company page has enough followers or if your personal account has the right audience)
You need to curate your feed when coming into a new industry as a marketer
Ensure that you understand the channels you are looking to repurpose content in, as that will guide the type of content you pull out of the main piece.
Consistent persistence - you just need to keep creating and publishing content. You aren’t always going to feel it, but you have to push through it.
Focus on the channels you are already in, and making them marginally and incrementally better over time instead of always chasing the new shiny object when it comes to content creation.

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

Camille is looking forward to testing how a template library can drive effective traffic
Camilly loves her password manager - nobody likes memorizing passwords.
Camille isn’t a fan of the phrase “adding value” and neither am I

Proofpoint’s POV:

Many marketers, especially in very technical industries, struggle with content development. The struggle because the subject matter is so technical that the marketer isn’t able to get deep enough to develop the content themselves. At least not content that a decision maker in the industry will care for or find valuable. They struggle because they aren’t able to get their SMEs to create enough content.

This is where using video (whether it be webinars, podcasts or video series) as your content engine can work wonders. Once you have the raw content developed, the marketing team can then spend their time cutting it up, repurposing it in various formats, and also focusing on effective distribution.

Relevancy and timeliness are key in marketing and the best way to get both is to use SMEs who live and breathe the subject matter to create the content. The marketing team can facilitate the content creation, but the SMEs are actually submitting the subject matter.

The way to do this, is to ensure that as much as possible you work your content creation into already existing workflows. So if you are already running webinars, see if you can repurpose those into podcast episodes and micro content for ads and organic. You can also create summaries and recaps which help with organic ranking and traffic.

As an added bonus, having the SMEs creating the content allows you to more easily activate these people on social by providing them with the awesome content they helped create. You can simply cut up the long-form video and send the SME several short clips and say “hey, you provided some really awesome nuggets, you should totally share this with your network!”.

A bit more about Camille:

Camille is a content marketing extraordinaire. She is a LinkedIn thought leader - and I don’t use that word lightly. She not only provides valuable educational content around content marketing, but she also likes to entertain her audience with things like this.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Connect with Camille on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camillehansentrent/
Check out Content Logistics Podcast: https://motionagency.io/content-logistics-podcast/
Follow Dooly on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dooly/

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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How great would it be if you had certified brand evangelists that consistently touted your product or service? Well, effectively creating a channel partner program will create just that. Finding super user consultancies or agencies can go a long way to drive significant referral leads and downstream revenue. Effective, is the operative word here, because making a partner program actually valuable to your partners takes a lot of work, and this is what Angelz Labrozzi, from Within3 did.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

How to decide what initiatives and benefits to include as part of your program
How to select participants for the initial pilot of the partner program
How to nurture partner contacts and keep them engaged
How to get internal buy-in and help with getting the program launched
How to decide whether your certification program should be free or paid

Angela’s recommendations:

Start with a pilot program of existing evangelists - people who are already referring you business without the program
Make sure to consistently ask for feedback from your partners and keep optimizing your program
Revshare doesn’t have to be part of the program for it to be successful. It all depends on what you are trying to achieve and what behaviors you want to incentivize
Check in with partner contacts personally on a quarterly basis
Make sure you have internal buy-in from sales, marketing and account teams and align on the objectives of the program
Double-down on events and co-marketing opportunities for your partners

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

Angela is going to be testing LinkedIn’s showcase pages to populate unique content for the partner program
Angela hates the word “buckets” in the business setting

Proofpoint’s POV:

Software partner programs are a dime a dozen. Just about every SaaS company has a partner program. However, many of them are not very successful. Many companies have either focus too much on revshare incentives or a “if you build it, they will come” mentality. The former will often have the opposite effect because you end up attracting the wrong kinds of partners. The latter often just fails because of a lack of interest.

Interestingly, as we at Proofpoint are working on building out our partner program, we are finding that many people have become jaded about the concept. Many have been burned, likely by one of the above, and are reluctant to commit to anything.

Oftentimes, these programs start with a lot of fanfare and excitement and then burn out. The reason is that the partner relationships are often not nurtured. They start out great, with the company keeping in constant contact and providing extra value, but over time it seems to peter out, at least until there is a major revenue push at the end of the quarter.

All of that is to say, we are believers in partnership programs, since we do want to create our own, but you really do need to treat these programs just like every other part of your marketing. You have to deeply understand your customers - in this case your partners - and you need to consistently get their feedback and evolve your program offering accordingly.

A bit more about Angela:

Angela is healthcare marketing expert, specifically specializing in partner programs. Angela is especially passionate about great swag–or at least avoiding cheap, crappy swag.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Connect with Angela on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-labrozzi/
Check out Within3’s partner showcase page on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/within3-virtual-engagement-partner-program/
Follow Within3 on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/within3/

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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Personal branding, employee advocacy, and social selling are all the rage right now, but what social selling actually is and what the impact that it can actually have can be fairly elusive. Social selling has actually been around for quite a while, and Alex Low has been evangelizing it since 2015. How would you like to drive $5 million in pipeline? That is what Alex was able to do with his social selling pilot way back in 2016, for JLL.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

How to pitch a social selling/employee advocacy program to executive leadership
How to measure success of a social selling program
How to scale 1:1 conversations social selling
The core principles of social selling (hint: they are the same now as they were back in 2015)
How things have evolved in social selling over the past 5 years
What changes need to happen in corporate leadership to facilitate and empower people to be active on social in the future

Alex’s recommendations:

Don’t force people to do something they really don’t want to do
You need to make your social selling program and related training all about what’s in it for each seller individually. It needs to be relevant to them.
You need to shift your mindset from broadcasting to engagement and conversation, to be successful on social.
Don’t overdo it with employee advocacy technology as that can actually be detrimental on LinkedIn
If you are passionate and care about the company you work for, you should be proud to share content about it
If your employees aren’t willing to talk about your company's ESG initiatives online, you likely have a bigger problem than implementing an employee advocacy program.
Read Timothy Hugh’s book about social selling

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

Alex hates the word “pivot”
Alex is very particular about how he takes his tea… Tea (PG Tips or Yorkshire Tea), milk and one sugar, and the milk goes in once the tea bag has been taken out. None of this horribleness of putting the milk in while the tea bag is still in there.

Proofpoint’s POV:

We are all in on personal branding and social selling at Proofpoint. LinkedIn has been responsible for the vast majority (90%) of our pipeline and in this most recent quarter has driven close to half a million in closed won deals.

There isn’t much of what Alex talked about that we can argue with. The one thing we can expound on a bit more though is the mindshift that needs to happen from interrupting and broadcasting to engaging and educating.

Platforms like LinkedIn have made it much easier for us to have direct access to our peers. This has created a shift where B2B buyers put much more stock in what their peers say than what they read from other 3rd party sources online. This means that people want to hear opinions and learn new things on LinkedIn. They don’t simply want to see/hear a regurgitation of the corporate message. They want to hear from you - the person.

This means that content creation has to evolve to support this, and what we are generally advising and what we are seeing work wonders for us and our clients is leveraging video as the content engine. Whether this is a video podcast, webinars, lives or recorded events, video allows you to put your full self out there, and build trust with your audience and prospective buyers. Video can then be repurposed into a variety of other mediums which can also be disseminated via social and other channels.

And as Alex mentioned, we are also starting to see more and more B2B content happening on TikTok, and we believe that it will be the next platform that B2B marketers will need to focus on as LinkedIn becomes more and more crowded over the next 6 - 12 months.

A bit more about Alex:

Alex is a sales transformation expert who has been championing social selling since the early days. He is a consultant as well as an advisor to a number of tech companies in the UK. Even though he hales from the land of football (the real kind… the one that actually involves kicking a ball) he isn’t much of a fan, and instead follows Formula 1, with Nigel Mansell (“and his mustache”) is his favorite.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Connect with Alex on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderlow/
Listen to Alex’s podcast - The Death of a Salesman
Check out Alex’s YouTube channel

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

Social Selling: Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers

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Want to build relationships, meet interesting people, have great conversations and also generate new business? You should consider starting a podcast. If Both guests and listeners can turn into net new business or into referrers, which is exactly what Tim Bornholdt, Partner at the Jed Mahonis Group has been able to achieve with his podcast, Constant Variables.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

How to figure out what content your audience wants to hear.
How to select your podcast guests
How to decide on your podcast format
How to get a podcast started - how to get it off the ground
How little children always end up headbutting the “sensitive areas” when giving hugs. Totally not marketing related, but any of our listeners who are parents - you will get a chuckle out of that part of the conversation.

Tims’s recommendations:

The podcast content needs to stand on its own and should be the focus, rather than focusing on business development.
Consider giving your B2B podcast a separate brand with a separate website, to give it more authenticity and separation from your corporate brand.
Don’t edit your own podcast
Consume some different types of podcasts before producing your own
Figure out what parts of podcasting you like, focus on those and outsource the rest.

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

Tim is really excited about testing AR
Tim can’t function without Slack

Proofpoint’s POV:

We love podcasts here at Proofpoint. Obviously. Gaby and I have now run two of them. The first was Mixing Business With Pleasure, which we put on hiatus and hope to pick up again this year, and the second is this one. With over 50 episodes under our belts, and many more planned, here is what we have taken away:

The worst thing that can happen if you host a podcast is you learn something. The second worst thing that can happen is that you mean someone interesting. We have learned a ton from some amazing marketing leaders and power couples, and we have made some genuine connections and even friends through this endeavor. While you can’t take that directly to the bank, there is a lot of value just from that aspect. Of course you can’t use that as a business case to your boss to start a B2B company podcast, but the next few should be good for that.
A podcast can be your content development engine. A 30-minute episode can fuel more than a week’s worth of social media and blog content. It can generate content for the company, to be used for demand generation efforts, and it can also generate content for the various individuals (hosts and guests) involved, which fosters personal branding and employee advocacy, which in-turn help put faces to the company name and build trust with your ICP.
A podcast can be a business development tool in more ways than one. As we discussed with Tim, getting your ideal customers to come on the show is one strategy, and it’s a great one as long as you focus on the content itself, not the business development activity. The goal is to create good content and build a relationship, not make a sale. But more than that, a podcast can fuel your sales outreach content strategy. Imagine your are having a conversation with a prospective customer and they mention that they are struggling to figure out how to make more from their webinars, and then you say “we actually just had a great conversation about that with Ben Reese last week, you should take a listen to that episode”.

So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and start your podcast!

A bit more about Tim:

Tim has a journalism and videography background and then got into development. He is the co-founder and partner at the Jed Mahonis Group - a full-stack, mobile software solutions consultancy. Tim is also an avid runner and outdoors enthusiast, and a student of minimalism.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Connect with Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timbornholdt/
Follow the Jed Mahonis Group on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-jed-mahonis-group/
Listen to the Constant Variables podcast: https://constantvariables.co/

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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How would you like to increase your inbound revenue by over 1,000%? It’s taken Ben and his team a solid 6 years to get to this point, but it has been solid triple digit growth every year. This case study is pretty much a playbook for anyone running marketing for complex technical businesses.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

How to clearly define your pipeline stages and transition only qualified leads to sales
How to get your internal SMEs to take part in content development
How to leverage webinars as a content engine
How to effectively build an annual marketing plan, when you are the sole marketer in the company
How to leverage live chat to decrease friction
The right way to nurture webinar registrants

Ben’s recommendations:

Make sure that you are holding on to the lead as long as possible before you kick it over to sales. A lead should only go to sales once the prospective customer is ready to make some big moves. NOTE: This makes sense with smaller TAMs and lower lead volumes.
Make sure that your live chat is staffed appropriately, and focus on answering questions, not selling.
Focus on creating more opportunities for real human-to-human interaction
Be transparent and own when something goes wrong in the customer experience
Use voice of the customer to ensure that you are messaging to your customers in the way that they are talking
If you are going to events, use that opportunity to do customer research
Your website should be a living breathing thing - updated based on what’s happening in the market, the challenges your customers are having and how they are talking.
Make sure you are walking into planning meetings with a concrete plan. It’s better to have sales and leadership to shoot things down and change topics, instead of asking for their input on what should be done.
Never have one person present a webinar by themselves. Have one person available for color commentary and another to manage the live chat.

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

Ben is a HubSpot junkie and can’t live without it.
As many out there, Ben hate’s the word “synergy”

Proofpoint’s POV:

What I love most about this conversation is that it makes you realize that the fundamentals of good marketing have always been around, but many marketers have gotten away from them because of technology.

If you spend any time scrolling through LinkedIn these days, you will hear many - myself sometimes included - saying that we need to switch from lead generation to demand generation. And while that is true, based on what we see in the market today, solid demand generation has been around for a long time. Ben has been doing it since 2012.

Whatever you call it, the point is that the focus needs to be on the customer and focusing on driving quality leads to your sales team. You do this by educating your customer, answering their questions, and focusing on pulling them in.

The other thing I loved about this conversation is how Ben was able to get his internal SMEs onboard and involved in content creation.

We always tell our customers that the key to successful content creation in a technical company is making as much of it as possible part of the already existing workflow. And in general, video is one of the easiest ways to get information directly from SMEs.

If your SMEs are presenting during internal meetings, record those presentations.
If your SMEs are present at conferences, set them up in a room and record customer interviews
If your executives are presenting at conferences, make sure you can get your hands on those recordings
If you are running a customer or user summit, make sure you plan for some good recording material

As an added benefit, video also allows you to put real faces to your marketing, and on top of that, it creates an incentive for the SMEs themselves to share content and get active on LinkedIn, because they no longer have to think about what they should create/write.

A bit more about Ben:

Ben is a former sales guy, turned marketer, and has been in the trenches for Dimensional Control Systems for almost ten years. He is extremely knowledgeable and what we would call a full-stack marketer. He is a self-proclaimed HubSpot junkie.

Ben is also a long-time martial arts enthusiast and instructor and has been most involved with Long Fist Kung Fu.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Connect with Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminreese/
Follow Alert Logic on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dimensional-control-systems/

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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How would you like to be able to drive upwards of 90% of your direct net new logo pipeline via your BDR function?

If that sounds like something you would be interested in, then this is a must listen episode for you. Bryan Urioste, CMO of cybersecurity firm Alert Logic, tells us all about how he creates alignment between the sales and marketing teams to achieve that result.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

Does it matter who owns the BDR function in your organization?
How to build and reconcile top-down and bottom-up forecasts
What the handoff from marketing to sales should look like
How to leverage webinars to drive pipeline
How “pipeline is the great equalizer”
How to build feedback loops between sales and marketing

Bryan’s recommendations:

Marketing should own pipeline. While marketers and BDRs don’t control closed-won deals, they do control pipeline being driven to the sellers.
You need to build your bottom up plan from a program/channel perspective, which needs to marry up to a budget plan, which can be used to justify (or argue against) the top down plan.
Create prioritization buckets based on intent and engagement. The more intent, the more personalized and 1:1 motion you drive.
To create credibility within the organization, marketing needs to be accountable for a pipeline number.
For large BDR organizations, create very structured team schedules - Bryan’s team has a schedule for every 30 minutes of the day. Everyone should be doing the same thing for every chuck of the day.
Maximize your tool stack. Don’t bring in any new tools/technology until your existing stack is slowing you down. Here is the tool stack the team at Alert Logic uses:
1. Salesforce
2. Marketo
3. Outreach
4. Drift
5. Smartsheet
6. 6Sense
7. Power BI

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

Bryan is looking forward to leveraging podcasts for both demand generation and ABM
Bryan can’t live without Power BI

Proofpoint’s POV:

We are revenue marketers here at Proofpoint, and just like Bryan, we are big proponents of strong integration between Sales and Marketing. There were three critical things Bryan mentioned during our conversation that stuck out and deserve some more color and attention:

For marketing to have credibility, they need to own a pipeline number. While we generally agree with this sentiment, and always look to take ownership of marketing sourced pipeline for our clients, there does also need to be room for marketing to test, and operate against other objectives, without being constrained by short-term quarterly pipeline numbers.For example, you may find that the organization needs to reposition itself in the market. While that will have long-term impacts on pipeline and revenue, short-term it likely won’t and will potentially take away from budget that could be spent on short-term objectives.

There is also tremendous value in keeping your marketing team’s creative juices flowing. Marketing is part art and part science, and if we only focus on short-term pipeline targets, that can stifle creativity which will hurt your organization in the long-run. Not least of which because you will end up with churn on your marketing team.

There should always be some percentage of marketing budget that is allocated to tests and pie in the sky ideas. 2. Reconciling top-down and bottom-up plans. This can’t be stressed enough. It is critical for marketing leaders to have a good working relationship with the CEO and the board, to ensure that a logical discussion can be had about top-down plans and targets. Because unrealistic targets often just end up hurting marketing performance in the long-run because the pressure to scale incentivizes (P.S. this is one of Bryan’s least favorite business words 😁… Sorry Bryan!) poor decisions and bad behaviors. 3. Carefully Manage your tool stack. This is a constant battle, as SaaS proliferates and companies spend more and more on niche tech tools. Most organizations significantly underutilize the tools that they have and then often bring in new tools which only tends to complicate matters.What we need to remember, is that tools are only as good as the people that are using them and the strategy that they are executing against.

A bit more about Bryan:

Bryan is a 2-time CMO, with a focus on technology companies. If you didn’t catch it from this conversation, Bryan is a revenue marketer at heart and is a big believer in integrating Sales and Marketing. Bryan is a huge proponent of the Strengths Finder. Here are his strengths: Positivity, Activator, Futuristic, Self-Assurance, WOO (Winning Others Over). Last, but not least, Bryan’s heritage is Basque, and while he isn’t a historian, he loves to share about Basque history.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Connect with Bryan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/b2bonlinemarketing/
Follow Alert Logic on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/alert-logic/

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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Personal branding is all the rage these days, and specifically in B2B people are generally talking about LinkedIn as the personal branding platform of choice.

In this episode, we talk with Steve Lamar, the CEO of PromoPrep, about how he has built a personal brand on Twitter - not LinkedIn - to more than double traffic to the site and increased product signups by 25%.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

Why/how to build in public
How to put out content that creates awareness but doesn’t directly sell the product
How to connect the personal brand to the company brand
How to measure the impact of your personal brand on your business

Steve’s recommendations:

Use the 80/20 rule for your content (80% who you are / 20% more promotional or product focus)
Choose your channel carefully and don’t spread yourself too thin.
Establish relationships with people by publicly engaging with people’s tweets and via DMs.
Keep an idea repository spreadsheet for tweets that has a character count
Twitter needs to be snappier, compared to LinkedIn posts - they have a much shorter shelf life

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

Steve is looking forward to expanding content marketing - having an SEO background he has admittedly not done enough for his own site.
Steve loves Snagit, and we are big proponents of this screenshot tool as well.

Proofpoint’s POV:

We are big proponents of personal branding at Proofpoint and encourage everyone who works here to build their personal brand. Not strictly because it will help Proofpoint - it will - but because it is invaluable for them as professionals.

Personal brands have become my go-to way to find people to recruit and to evaluate inbound candidates. I don’t as much care about their resume, but I definitely pay attention to the content they have put out. And if I have two candidates with seemingly the same skillset, but one with a much stronger personal brand, I’ll often choose the latter.

It’s interesting that personal brands have become all the rage because in the DTC space, influencers and content creators have been building personal brands for over a decade. Pretty much ever since social media became a thing, people have been building brands and leveraging those brands to make money, land deals, land jobs, etc.

The big problem that I see with personal brands is that the term has become too nebulous. For the average professional, a personal brand is really your reputation management. If you think about it that way, it makes content creation much easier, because it gives your personal brand a purpose.

A bit more about Steve:

Steve is a former agency guy, with over a decade of SEO and PPC experience. From that experience he saw a problem - how marketing agencies managed marketing and content calendars - and decided to solve it by building PromoPrep. He has chosen to build in public and now has over 15K followers on Twitter.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Connect with Steve on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevelamar/
Follow Steve on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevejlamar/
Follow PromoPrep to see what they are up to next: https://twitter.com/promoprep

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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Everyone loves a good unicorn story. But can you imagine being a mature business all of a sudden needing to go up against a major VC backed unicorn?

By now, everyone knows the story of WeWork, but before the saga of Adam Neumann and SoftBank played out, WeWok was literally taking over the world. If you were in the co-working industry at that time, you were in WeWork’s cross-hairs. If you are curious how a business can survive and succeed in the face of this kind of onslaught, you need to listen to this EXCLUSIVE David vs. Goliath story from Garrio Harrison.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

How to work with your CFO to stress test your marketing plan
What financial metrics are important for marketers to know and manage to, especially for those who aren’t VC backed.
How to analyze your CRM data to narrow in on your ICP
The fundamental difference between how sales and marketing operate
How to make marketing intentional by collaborating across teams
The four stages of tackling marketing strategy
What frameworks to use, to solve marketing problems

Garrio's Recommendations:

Make sure the math works for you. Trying to reverse engineer or replicate your competitor’s strategy is often not the way to go, especially if their funding and business model is different from yours.
Throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks, is not a fiscally responsible way to do marketing.
Marketers need to understand managerial finance.
Marketing needs to be aligned with business outcomes, which is more than just ROI and revenue.
Marketers need to deeply understand the business model they are operating in.
Your CRM will make you directionally correct, but you need to be talking with customers.
You need to validate your CRM data.
You need to have empathy for your sales team and your customer
For new marketers, there are two things you need to learn: sales, and managerial finance.

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

Garrio considers cash-flow to be a core marketing measurement
Garrio is looking forward to co-creating content, like this podcast, with the ICP
If you have any LinkedIn SalesNavigator questions, reach out to Garrio - as he can’t live without that tool

Proofpoint's POV:

There are so many things to like about what Garrio shared in this episode, that there isn’t enough time or room in this section to provide our in-depth opinions on all of them. We, at Proofpoint definitely share a very similar outlook on marketing strategy and how marketing needs to operate within the business. Here are a few highlights to expound on a bit more:

Marketers need to be good at business, not just marketing. Garrio specifically mentioned understanding sales and managerial finance, and I like to talk about business concepts and data concepts. All of that is to say that the only way a marketer can progress in their career, be promoted, etc. is by understanding the role that marketing plays within the business, not just understanding marketing strategy and tactics.
As Garrio mentioned, marketing strategy needs to be intentional, and needs to ladder up to the desired business outcomes and overarching business strategy. You see this very often with marketers who have “shiny object syndrome”. They are so enamored with what’s hot in the marketing world, that they don’t stop to think about whether the new thing makes sense based on their business model, their business objectives, their company ethos, etc. This also happens often when marketers spend too much time worrying about what the competition is doing, which brings us to the next point.
Spend less time worrying about your competitors, and more about how you can address the market and show your value proposition. The reality is that every business is different, even businesses within the same industry can have different funding models, capital structures, org structures, etc. So if you are only looking at what they are doing for marketing, without understanding the rest of their business, it will likely be a recipe for disaster.
Marketing and Finance should be best friends. The “grumpy CFO” meme has been around for ages. And sure, there is some truth to it. But as a marketing leader you should aim to make the CFO your best friend. I am not talking about taking the CFO out for drinks. I am talking about taking the time to understand their world - have a working knowledge of managerial finance. Have a working knowledge of the business and revenue model you are operating in. And, when you come to your CFO, don’t simply ask for more budget, but instead bring them into the conversation and work on stress testing your marketing plan.This is especially critical for earlier stage, non-VC backed businesses. You need to understand, for example, how your plan is going to impact cash-flow and what tradeoffs will the business potentially have to make in order to fund it.

This was one of our personal favorite episodes, as we got to dig into the mind of a marketer turned COO, and understanding the operational aspects of your business and how marketing impacts them, is a critical skill. Plus the suspense, drama and great ending to the modern-day "David and Goliath" story in Garrio's EXCLUSIVE case study is epic!

A bit more about Garrio:

Garrio was born and raise in Jamaica. He's currently the COO of two amazing Minnesota-based organizations. One is a sales training company called Closers Media; as well as a revenue-focused marketing agency, Curious. Outside of working with clients, he dedicates time to community development and supporting the next generation of business leaders and works with the Silicon North Stars, a non-profit committed to inspiring young Minnesotans to become future technology leaders. You can learn more about their work at www.siliconnorthstars.org. Garrio is not just a shrewd business person and an intelligent marketer, he's first and foremost a family man and a constant fixture on the Peloton leaderboard.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Connect with Garrio on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrioharrison/
Follow Closers Media for all your sales training needs: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffeeclosers/
Follow Curious to see what they are up to next: https://www.linkedin.com/company/discovercurious/

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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Marketers tend to focus on customer acquisition, but often the onboarding process is forgotten. Well, Jaclyn Mullen is here to tell us why onboarding is so crucial for product adoption and ultimately revenue impact. Would you like to increase your onboarding sequence response rate by 70%? Then you need to listen to this episode.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

How to keep enough personalization in your automation so that it can both scale and still have an impact on the customers
How to decide what information should be included in your onboarding sequence
How to facilitate real engagement during onboarding
How to make onboarding a full experience, not just simple automation

Jaclyn’s recommendations:

The qualitative data from responses to onboarding sequences can be invaluable for better understanding your customers.
Timing is everything when it comes to onboarding cadences. How quickly emails go out, and when.
Make sure that your onboarding doesn’t sound like an infomercial
Open-ended questions are great, but sometimes you need to make it easy for people to self-select.
Make sure your onboarding sequence is based on what they are actually doing (or not doing) in your platform/program.
Talking to 5 customers is all you need to start and have enough qualitative information.
People want to laugh and be entertained. Don’t forget about that in B2B marketing.

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

Jaclyn is looking forward to testing out Instagram Reels
Jaclyn can’t stand the phrase “brass tax”

Proofpoint’s POV:

Client/customer onboarding is very much an overlooked aspect for many companies, and it often doesn’t seem to matter what industry they are in. In professional services, we often find onboarding to overly focus on the project management aspect, while in SaaS the focus is often on automation and scale. And in both cases, the personal connection is missed. We are dealing with people in B2B afterall, aren’t we?

While it isn’t the start of the business relationship, it is often the first interaction that anyone outside of sales and marketing has with the customer. It is a critical handoff, and sets the tone for the rest of the relationship. A botched onboarding can actually have a significant negative impact on client retention and ultimately revenue.

At Proofpoint, we have created a stellar onboarding experience for our clients and have been working to optimize and improve it ever since.

There are a few key takeaways from our conversation with Jaclyn that are worth highlighting and expounding on. First, your business model needs to drive your onboarding. While traditional onboarding sequences in SaaS try to get customers to upgrade or upgrade from freemium, Aspireship’s business model doesn’t require this for their candidate experience. So they didn’t need to be pushy in their onboarding messaging.

Second, visual continuity in the onboarding experience is valuable for creating a personal connection. We talked about this with Udi in last week’s episode in terms of visual continuity helping to build brand equity. But in this case, the visual continuity really helps to build a personal connection and rapport with your customer.

A bit more about Jaclyn:

Jaclyn is the Growth Marketing Manager at Aspireship as well as a marketing consultant and speaker. She has also been a marketing instructor for many years.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Connect with Jaclyn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaclynofalltrades/
Follow Aspireship to see what they are up to next: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aspireship/

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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This episode was a real treat. Not only because we got to talk about the real impact of Superbowl ad for a B2B brand, but also because we got the chance to talk to the amazing Udi Ledergor, CMO of Gong, about how doing untraditional plays can help a B2B brand win an unfair share of hearts and minds of prospects and customers.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

How a Superbowl ad can actually be relatively cost-effective (hint: regional spots)
How to convince your CEO and CFO to do something unconventional (hint: it may include some drinks 😁)
How traditional mass-media type marketing can have real pipeline impact
How to target a very small/finite audience using mass media
How visual continuity in advertising creates better brand equity and helps to better tell the story

Udi’s recommendations:

Work for a CEO who either gets marketing or at least values marketing
As a leader, follow the best advice that everyone knows and few actually take - go hire someone who is better than you at certain things and let them show you how to do it.
Clearly label who you are speaking to (your buyer persona) in your content marketing and advertising.
Do what others aren’t doing to stand out and break through the noise.
Don’t design by committee. Committees never do great things. There needs to be one final decision maker, with a small group whose opinions are requested.
Make sure you allocate a portion of your budget for ad-hoc experimentation
Branding isn’t just visual. Think of the Nokia ringtone or the Windows 95 startup sound.
Everyone should read Influence by Robert Cialdini

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

Udi’s team at Gong is re-launching a weekly LinkedIn Live show (it’s on Friday’s for anyone who wants to attend)
Udi hates “best practices”. They are boring, unexciting, and overused, which drive boring, mediocre results.

Proofpoint’s POV:

Most B2B brands are boring, and most marketers do boring marketing. But it really doesn’t have to be. Udi’s recommendation to take inspiration from B2C brands is a good one and more B2B marketers should take it.

The majority of Proofpointers come from a B2C background and it has definitely permeated into the B2B work we currently do for ourselves and our customers.

Udi mentioned hating “best practices” and we would definitely echo that sentiment. In B2B marketing, and in marketing in general, the trend and drive to 100% attribution and the proliferation of marketing automation has driven marketers to focus on a standard playbook using a standard set of tools and measuring success in a very specific way. This has made just about every B2B company in any particular industry look the same as the competition.

Marketers are afraid to do activities they can’t measure.

Marketers aren’t willing to remove friction and be customer-centric because it’s too expensive and hard to measure.

Marketers don’t spend the time to really understand their customers at a deep enough level to create the experiences necessary to really move the needle and drive extraordinary results.

You heard it first-hand, in this episode. A well-made and well-placed Superbowl ad had real tangible impact on a B2B tech brand’s pipeline. They had their highest number of sales accepted opportunities in any given week, in their history. Yet how many B2B brands have done Superbowl commercials in the past? And if I had to put money on it, even seeing/hearing about these results, most still will never commit to something like that.

Think about how many B2B brands are having success with podcasts? Yet, the vast majority of B2B brands aren’t willing to commit the resources to really do a podcast the right way - to produce the type of quality content that will have an impact on your audience.

Think about how many B2B influencers have huge personal followings and consistent audiences tuning in to their LinkedIn live shows? Yet, the vast majority of B2B brands aren’t willing to commit the resources to create live shows and aren’t supportive enough of their employees’ personal brands to have them do it.

And don’t even get me started on B2B influencer marketing. It’s oversaturated on the B2C side, yet virtually no B2B brands are willing to do it.

A bit more about Udi:

Udi is a 5-time VP of Marketing for leading B2B tech companies, and the current CMO at Gong. He is a champion for diversity and inclusion and loves taking inspiration from B2C brands to make B2B brands more exciting and customer-centric.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Connect with Udi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/udiledergor/
Follow Gong to see what they are up to next: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gong-io/
The creative studio Udi used for the superbowl ad: Picture Labs

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion

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We liked our conversation with James so much that we decided to talk about category design again. This time with John Rougeux - VP of Marketing Strategy.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

What is category design, and what is the benefit
When does category design make sense to pursue, and when it doesn’t
The time horizon for a category design initiative
The impact of category design on the various teams within your organization
How to get the right information from customers to drive the category definition and messaging language
How to build experiences that bring the category to life
How to get the leadership team and the whole company on board and excited about the work
How a category can be redefined

John’s recommendations:

You don’t want to be in a position where you are trying to convince someone that category design is the way to go. You should be discussing the overarching business objectives and constraints.
There needs to be a real challenge with where you are today as a business, to make pursuing category design make sense.
You need to get an agreement on the problem (that your category solves) before you can talk about the solution.
Create a “lightning strike” contest to get everyone involved and excited.
Trust your intuition - not everything in marketing can be measured - do the things that other companies aren’t willing to do.
Build a close relationship with your CEO because category design needs to be led from the top.

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

John hates the word “personalization” because it has lost its meaning
John is looking forward to testing out how marketers sending out personalized videos to all inbound leads will impact revenue.

Proofpoint’s POV:

We have already talked about category design for our previous episode with James Ricks, so to not repeat anything from that episode, something interesting to consider and dive into some more would be where does category design not make sense.

The main thing to remember, as John mentioned in our conversation, is that category design is a business strategy, and that to start you need to understand what the business objectives and constraints are.

So something to consider is that there are some types of businesses where category design isn’t really that feasible. Specifically, I am thinking about service businesses. There are only so many categories of services and most of them are fairly commoditized and often any new category is driven by external factors and/or technology vendors. The closest thing you can do in service categories is to niche down into a particular vertical or service sub-type, but it’s hard if not impossible to create a new category of service.

The other thing to mention is that not every business needs to be a leader in a category to be successful. For example, if you are building a lifestyle business, you only need to have a small slice of the market to drive enough revenue. In a similar vein, if your business objective is to create a small to mid-sized company and get it acquired by a larger competitor, then you again don’t really need to create a new category.

A bit more about John:

John is an entrepreneur and a category design practitioner and consultant. He founded and sold his former company Causely. He runs a category design blog and consulting company called Flag and Frontier and has been heading up marketing strategy for BombBomb for the past year and a half. Last but not least, and I am not sure how we forgot to ask John about this during the show… he hiked the entire Appalachian Trail after college.

Helpful Links & Resources:

John’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbrougeux/
John’s Company: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bombbomb/

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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If you can’t be first in a category, then you should create a new category you can be first in. And that is exactly what James and his company RTA has been working on.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

How to roll out a new category internally and how to “measure” initial success
How to get employees involved in creating content about the category
How to use a random viral video to sell your leadership on category design
How to get your team active on LinkedIn
A few examples of “lightning strikes” (a category-defining event/initiative): a book, a podcast, category training and certification
How to get information from your customers

James’ recommendations:

What got you here, won’t get you there. As the market dynamics change, you have to do something you have never done before
The entire team needs to be on board with the category, and it’s important to have agreement on what embarking on category design can mean for each team - finance, product, sales, etc. not just marketing.
Your category has to be bigger than your product.
Read the Category Creation book by Anthony Kennada.
Talking to customers is mission critical to seeing patterns and validating the idea and need for a new category.
A “lightning strike” doesn’t need to be something expensive or resource heavy.

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

James is very excited about RTA’s new podcast
Don’t use the word “unprecedented” around James

Proofpoint’s POV:

Category design isn’t new, but that doesn’t make it any less impactful. Creating a category is the best way to differentiate your business.

When you create a category, you create an opportunity for your company to take a POV on the issue the category is dealing with. At that point, you are no longer selling your product. You are simply getting people to either agree or disagree with your POV. And once they agree with your POV, you are the only game in town.

Doing so makes the work and decision making across all teams easier. Sales no longer needs to sell the better widget. Instead they are just promoting the POV. Marketing doesn’t have to wonder what content to create. All content needs to support the POV. The product team doesn't need to wonder which features to prioritize. All features need to support the POV. Hiring becomes easier because your candidates either understand and get excited about your POV, or they don’t.

The list goes on.

What I love about what James brought up is that their new category of Fleet Success is allowing RTA to over time stop competing and start leading. Specifically James mentioned declining unit economics of paid media in the Fleet Management space. This is something that many businesses, not just SaaS, are starting to see right now. Traditional intent-based channels like paid search have been becoming more and more expensive over the years - paying $15 - $30 per click is often not feasible, even when you are selling a $20,000 - $100,000 ACV product.

Creating a new category allows you to avoid this over time, since a new category creates a new category of keywords which initially will be less expensive, and if you are the leader, then you will also own the organic as well. Not to mention the mindshare captured in awareness channels like social.

In short, creating a new category allows you to change your marketing mix.

A bit more about James:

James is an entrepreneur, marketer and a risk taker (follow his LinkedIn handle #takingricks). At one point pre-pandemic, James and his family decided to sell their home, put their stuff in storage and move to Hawaii all while James was starting The Consulting Launchpad.

Helpful Links & Resources:

James’ LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricksjrr/
James’ Company: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rtafleet/

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

Category Creation: How to Build a Brand that Customers, Employees, and Investors Will Love

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Johnas is the senior global social media manager for Cadence Design Systems and created an award-winning social campaign for Cadence which more than doubled corporate channel followers and a significant increase in engagement, and while Johnas can’t take credit for Cadence’s stock going up during this period, there is a clear correlation

What you’ll learn in this episode:

How to perform a social media audit
How to get your executives involved
How to repurpose written content to video
How to humanize your social content

Johnas’ recommendations:

You need to understand where your audience is - not just channels, but also location - and focus on those core channels
In B2B, decision-makers want to buy from businesses whose leaders they believe in
Don’t guide executives on which channel to engage in, but instead encourage them to go after the channel they are already most comfortable with.
If you are in a technical business, you need to humanize the content

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

Johnas is all about short-form video
Johnas can’t live without Sprout Social

Proofpoint’s POV:

Johnas is 100% correct in saying that people want to buy from companies whose executive leadership they trust. You don’t have to look much further than Elon Musk. His personal brand presence is a huge reason for the success of both Tesla and SpaceX.

Now it doesn’t have to be the CEO, although that does help. But having executives like your VP of product, VP of engineering and CMO out there evangelizing the company narrative is huge.

But, as we talked about in this episode, it is hard to get executives on board. Here are few recommendations, in addition to those that Johnas shared, to help:

Explaining the impact in business metrics, not marketing metrics. Your executives don’t care about engagement rates, page followers, and website traffic. They do care about revenue and customer acquisition costs. So show them the power of a personal brand by comparing cost-to-acquire from organic channels to paid.
Find one single executive champion and use them as an example. Ideally, this should be someone who is already active on social, where the impact will be quicker to see, and you won’t have to do much coercing to get them to commit.
Make it easy to track the impact, by using trackable links through something like bit.ly and tracking pre and post-performance trends.
Make it easy for them. Offer to identify topics and even provide rough outlines for written content. Provide talking points for video content.
Get them into communication situations where they already want to be, like speaking events and customer summits, and record them.
Get them onto podcasts and ensure to ask for the transcript and any audio/video footage. You can then either repurpose this content directly or use it to create blog/article content for them.

A bit more about Johnas:

Johnas Street is not just a marketer, but also an actor and an American Idol finalist. He even opened a show for Usher as a teen. Johnas is the Sr. Global Social Media Manager and Senior PR Specialist at Cadence and is responsible for the corporate social media strategy and global plan to increase awareness and preference for the company, the brand, and products. This role is part of the Corporate Marketing team. Johnas is a father to three, two of which are twins! Johnas was also recently nominated as part of the Adweek Rising ‘21 mentee program. You can find Johnas on almost every social media channel!

Helpful Links & Resources:

Johnas’ LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnasstreet/
Johnas’ Twitter Profile: @Johnas_Street
Johnas' IMDB Profile: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7862928/
Johnas' YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoHM-oQ2EMci10J2lpID_uQ
Johnas’ Company: https://www.cadence.com/en_US/home.html

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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Hook Agency focuses on the niche construction and roofing contractor market and was able to build a strategic partnership with a YouTube influencer that drove 40 high-quality leads in 2 weeks, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in closed-won business. This lead volume is about double what the agency generally received on a weekly basis.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

How to find the right influencer for your business
A sneaky way to attract said influencer
How to build a relationship with a referral partner
The kinds of co-marketing that can be done with a referral partner
How to create the “attribution story”

Tim’s recommendations:

Be useful to the people that know how to get attention in your niche, and start with making a list of the top 10
Focus on the channels where your influencers are, which may not be the same channels that your end users are on
Don’t worry about a certain amount of competition from your referral partners
Everything he does in marketing, he believes in part influences potential referral partners
Get your team involved in being active on social media, and more specifically in the various groups and micro communities where your influencers live
Send the influencers gifts to “sweeten the deal”
Don’t “be desperate” - don’t come off like you need business from them now.

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

Tim is doubling down on YouTube influencers for Hook’s marketing
Tim is a big fan of The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone, and apparently, everyone loves to hate this one, so curious what others think.

Proofpoint’s POV:

While Tim is in a very different business than many of our clients, what they have done in terms of focusing on influencers to build up referral partnerships is a great strategy.

Influencers are very much an accepted channel in the B2C space, but it is still often overlooked in the B2B space, and it definitely shouldn’t be. In Tim’s case, his team is focused on YouTube influencers, and I can tell you that just about every industry we work in with our clients has major YouTube influencers.

We work with a company that sells farm management software, and there are a number of major YouTube influencers in the farming industry.

We work with a company that sells restaurant automation technology, and there are a number of influential industry folks on YouTube.

We work with a medical device engineering firm, and there are a bunch of engineers with huge followings on YouTube.

I think you get the point. And it definitely doesn’t have to be YouTube. You might have influencers on LinkedIn, on Twitter, heck even on TikTok. Or you might be looking at micro-influencers that are big in specific micro-communities on Slack. Or, if we want to go a bit more old school, maybe they are influencers inside of your industry trade groups.

Any way you slice it, Tim’s advice is very solid. Find the people that are good at getting attention in your industry, and be helpful to them. This is definitely a long-term play, but it generally has a great payoff.

A bit more about Tim:

Tim is a former musician and the founder of Hook Agency, which he now runs along with his wife Bea Bonte. If you are a construction or roofing contractor looking to scale your business, you would be remiss if you didn’t get in touch with Tim and his team.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Tim’'s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-brown-%F0%9F%8E%A3-3160bb35/
Tim’s Company: https://hookagency.com/

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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We’re diving deep into ABM with Andrei Zinkevich. And no, we’re not talking about expensive ABM tech stacks and intent-based display ads. We’re talking about getting your hands dirty, figuring out your real ICP and aligning your sales and marketing teams around them, ABM.

Andrei is an entrepreneur and has been in the trenches of sales and marketing for over 15 years.

The case study we discussed generated $300k in revenue from 6 deals which closed from an ABM campaign focused on 30 target accounts.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

When less leads can actually mean more revenue
How to develop your actual ICP that is more than just firmographics
What questions to ask during in-depth customer interviews
How to get your customers to take the time to do the customer interviews
How to warm up your accounts
The timeline and bandwidth needs for an ABM campaign
How to combine direct mail and gifting with personalized digital content hubs

Andrei’s recommendations for building ABM campaigns:

Focus on best use cases, not revenue, when figuring out your ICP
Ensure that leadership is onboard with focusing on customer interviews
Make sure to also analyze common patterns of why deals are lost
Focus on no more than 30 accounts for an ABM pilot
Ensure that you analyze and dig into the negative campaign responses
Do real personalization - no, not the dynamic name and company insert into emails.

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

Andrei is a huge fan of ActiveCampaign
Andrei hates the words “growth” and “scalability” - you will have to listen to the episode to find out why.
If you know anything about Soviet era cartoons, you will have probably heard or seen Karlsson on the Roof, which was Andrei’s favorite growing up.
Proofpoint’s POV:

Well, confirmation bias really is a thing, because this was one of our favorite episodes. Not because the rest of our guests haven’t shared great content, but because Andrei really hit on many of the points we usually stress to our clients:

More leads doesn’t necessarily mean more revenue
You don’t need an expensive tech stack to run ABM
Display ads are generally a waste of money
You need to spend the time to do the research - talking to customers is absolutely paramount
A real human touch is time consuming, but is extremely beneficial when it comes lead-to-close rates

So we loved everything Andrei had to say about ABM, and honestly, we can’t find a single thing to nitpick with any of his recommendations.

The only thing to bring up is that ABM as Andrei is describing it may not be the place you want to start. It really depends on where you are in terms of your marketing playbook evolution.

For example, if you are a fairly new startup and don’t have a good idea of who your real ICP is, it’s too soon for ABM. Or even if you are a company who is just trying to transition from the “lead gen hamster wheel” you should probably first focus on building up a demand gen playbook before going down the ABM route.

This is because solid demand gen execution will provide that extra layer of awareness and scale that will be able to supplement an ABM effort.

A bit more about Andrei:

Andrei is the co-founder of Fullfunnel.io and ROIplan. He was born in the Ukraine and lives in beautiful Croatia.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Andrei’'s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azinkevich/
Andrei’s podcast: https://fullfunnel.io/podcast/
Andrei’s Company: Fullfunnel.io
Andrei’s Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/b2bmarketersnfounders

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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On today's episode, we dive into all things sports, theatre and podcasting with the amazing Jason Bradwell, Sr. Director of Marketing at Deltatre. As Jason says, the company "is the best kept secret in sports broadcasting.”

While Deltatre is fascinating in its own right, the success story we discussed was even more so—how to leverage a podcast to generate social proof, credibility and trust with potential customers, in industries where customers aren’t terribly eager to provide/approve case studies.

Jason and his team launched a podcast last year called Field to Fan, which has allowed them to get in front of 4 - 5 clients that had gone cold prior to then.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

A podcast isn’t meant to be a sneaky play to get a customer to talk about your product, but it can happen naturally if there is no pressure.
How to set measurement targets and benchmarks for your podcast.
How to sell the ideas of starting a podcast to leadership.
Why Jason believes every marketer should take an improv class.
How to create a podcast on a shoe-string budget.
How to repurpose podcast episode content.
The two key functions of marketing—demand generation and brand building—and how they (should) play together.

Jason's recommendations for company sponsored podcasts:

Make sure you allow your customers (and other guests) to review the final episode content before pushing it live, to ensure that they are happy with what is going out there.
Choose how you will measure the impact of your podcast. HINT: it doesn’t need to be listenership and downloads unless your goal is to compete with media companies.
Consider whether launching a podcast will make you a “big fish in a small pond” in terms of competing with competitors.
Start small—don’t worry about a professional studio or hiring a professional host.
Don’t over-prepare. It’s ok to have a guideline, but focus on having real conversations rather than forcing it down the path you planned to take.
Share the podcast with your sales team so they can share it with their networks.
Focus on building real relationships with your guests.

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

Jason doesn’t know his blood type… and apparently neither does Mike!
Jason is very excited in testing out Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces this year for B2B marketing.
Don’t use the phrase “move the needle” around Jason...

Proofpoint’s POV:

We at Proofpoint are obviously very much in support of podcasts as a viable marketing channel. We've launched two podcasts: this one and another show called Mixing Business with Pleasure (currently on hiatus). We've met some amazing people through podcasting. Some of our guests have turned into amazing friendships and connections, while others have turned into real business opportunities. But the most important part is how it's allowed us to create a content engine.

You may come across some that will tell you that they only way to measure a company podcast is by the number of business conversations generated. We strongly disagree, for two reasons:

Most people have caught on to this trick and are wary of the “podcast sales pitch."
By doing this you are potentially creating an incentive for mediocre content, which won’t help you across all the other channels you could leverage this content on.

Sure, you can focus on building a niche audience that is in your ICP, but many people mistake that to mean you should only invite guests onto your show that are directly in that ICP. Your ICP cares about more than just listening to their peers, and you have an opportunity to facilitate that.

If you're creating great content, you'll foster better relationships with your guests and listeners in the long run.

Speaking of great content… in this episode Jason provides many great suggestions on how to repurpose your episode content, and there are a few in particular we want to highlight and add:

Providing podcast content as assets to your sales team. Not only the full episodes, but also the micro-clips and potentially blog recaps.
Creating a blog summary, though simply providing a transcript won't be enough to have any impact on SEO, and likely isn’t enticing enough for someone to read unless they know the person on your show or have immense interest in the topic being discussed. We recommend a recap style format like this one. While it does take longer (about an hour for each of our episodes) it's well worth it.
Focus on the micro-content. You and your team will likely have significantly more reach on social media than you will via the podcast directories—and people on social media have short attention spans. Prioritize 2-3 short-clips from your recordings in the form of video or audiograms.

Now for the fun part—measurement—how do you measure whether your B2B podcast is successful? There are several quantitative and qualitative indicators we recommend:

Are the right people (people in your ICP) engaging with the content on social media?
Is your sales team leveraging podcast content assets in their outreach? Is it helping them have more conversations?
Is your sales team using the podcast guest invite as a way to start conversations with prospects?
Are you seeing increased brand search traffic after the podcast launches?
Are prospects mentioning the podcast in their lead submission forms or on sales calls?

If this episode does anything for you, it should give you the permission and tools to start creating your own podcast. Get started and let us know how it goes! We're happy to connect if you have any questions along the way.

A bit more about Jason:

Jason has over a decade developing strategies for everything from niche consultancy firms to enterprise technology businesses. He believes B2B marketing is broken and is on a mission to fix it. Jason shares some of his learnings on how to do better marketing in his weekly newsletter, The B2B Bite, and interviews other amazing audience builders on his podcast, B2B Better.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Jason’'s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-bradwell-40b45751/
Jason’s podcast: https://b2b-better.buzzsprout.com/
Jason’s newsletter: https://b2bbite.substack.com/

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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We had the pleasure of talking with the talented Moira van den Akker, formerly the Senior Manager of Demand Generation at Trimble. Formerly, because since this recording Moira has changed jobs and is now Senior Manager, Demand Generation at Demandbase.

In this episode, we talk about ABM—Account Based Marketing—something that’s all the rage these days. Take a listen to learn what real ABM orchestration looks like. In Moira’s case, her ABM pilot drove 3 new pipeline opportunities (out of 15 named accounts) in the first 30 days.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

There is a difference between account-based campaigns and account-based marketing, where you have real alignment with sales, going after shared targets.
How to pitch an ABM effort to senior leadership, and who the stakeholders should be
How to measure account-based efforts
How to curate and personalize content for each account
Perfect is the enemy of the good - how to launch quickly and iterate as you go
You need the right market intelligence and messaging to make the tech and targeting work well.

Here's what Moira’s ABM campaign execution looked like:

20 total accounts were identified for the pilot
They used Uberflip to spin up custom curated landing pages for each account
They sent personalized emails to account contacts
They leveraged LinkedIn ads
They leverage programmatic display ads via 6Sense, along with 6Sense intent data

Here are the tips and things to keep in mind for your next ABM campaign:

Get real insights from your sales teams about each account. This will help when the time comes to create and curate content personalized for these people.
Make sure you really partner with sales, and understand their pain - where in the funnel are you trying to make an impact.
Don’t overcomplicate it. Don’t worry about having the perfect content or the perfect tech stack at launch. Focus on launching and quickly tweaking as assets are in-market.

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

Moira is a revenue marketer at heart, so marketing sourced revenue is her north star.
Moira has a top notch B2B marketing blog, which you should definitely check out!

Proofpoint’s POV:

ABM is a buzzword these days and can be very overwhelming to figure out due to how much martech vendors have really pushed it over the past few years. As Moira so aptly stated, there is a difference between ABM campaigns and real account based marketing. There are three main components to it:

The targeting - choosing which accounts to go after and then targeting them via a variety of platforms and tools.
The content curation and personalization - you have to do this otherwise, there is no point in spending the extra time and money for targeting.
The orchestration with your sales team - you can’t just have this be a marketing effort.

The problem these days though is that the various martech vendors out there have really made it seem like you aren’t doing real ABM unless you are using an ABM platform - they have built a category and done great marketing. That simply isn’t true though.

If the accounts you are targeting are large enough, with many stakeholders, then you can target them directly in LinkedIn for example, without a tool. If you are focused on only a few particular contacts, then you are much better to use “hand-to-hand combat “methods to get in front of them. Again, no need for a tool.

And if you do use a tool, especially if you leverage any type of “intent driven programmatic display” we recommend that you have a control group where you don’t use this channel because while view-through and engagement metrics are great, neither of those really shows causality.

There are two main issues that we generally see marketing teams make when doing ABM:

They believe that ABM is the only way to do things and treat it as their saving grace when their inbound efforts aren’t working. The problem is that in many cases the inbound efforts aren’t working, not because of the targeting or the absence of curated account-based content, but because they are still following the gated content lead generation playbook.Before jumping into ABM you need to ensure that you have your messaging, demand generation and brand down pat.
They measure the wrong things when executing campaigns. You even heard a bit of that in this episode where Moira discussed the view-through and engagement metrics. The good thing is that she and her team still stayed with their north star and focused on marketing sourced pipeline as the main metric.

A bit more about Moira:

Moira has over 10 years of marketing experience and specializes in B2B demand orchestration and revenue marketing. She is a Forbes Communication Council member and contributor, and is passionate about helping women in B2B marketing find their sense of creativity and purpose, foster an innovative approach and to maximize their potential – in and out of the workplace.

Helpful Links & Resources:

Moira’'s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moiravandenakker/
Moira’s Blog: https://www.moiravandenakker.com/

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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Show Me The Proof, Get to The Point’s debut episode kicks off with Brooklin Nash, Head of Content at Sales Hacker, the leading community for the next generation of salespeople. Brooklin is a content marketer, and content is what we focused on in this episode—specifically content that drives organic search traffic.

We discussed how to update existing content to increase organic traffic—a 43% increase in just 6 weeks, in Brooklin’s case study!

What you’ll learn in this episode:

How to perform an SEO audit—spoiler alert—you don’t need to be a technical SEO expert to create good content that drives organic traffic.
How to identify existing content that can benefit from a refresh/update.
How to execute large scale content optimization (think 100 pages in Brooklin’s case) in a short period of time.
What are the optimization opportunities on existing content.
The importance of a good content brief, especially when working with outsourced writers.

Here's the audit method Brooklin implemented:

Identify the pages that are already ranking either bottom of page 1 or top of page 2 for some target terms. In both cases, some slight tweaks can help them get to either top of page 1 or from page 2 to page 1, which in both cases creates major improvements in click-through rate and in turn traffic.
Do a quick scan of each identified page (Brooklin says no more than 15 minutes per page) and write down a note or two about what is missing or could be improved.
Take a second pass and in more detail create content briefs based on what top ranking competitors have included and also what gaps they have that your content can fill. You can find an example of a content brief that Brooklin used here.
Evaluate the SERPs (top ranking results and “people also ask” section) to identify the search intent which the content needs to focus on.
Cross-reference each page against Google Analytics and/or Search Console to identify things like CTR issues.

Here are the types of optimizations implemented to improve the content pages:

Going more in depth on topics to get broader coverage
Explain WHY the topic is important to get people interested in reading further
Ensuring that headers and titles are optimized for target keywords
Make the layout and content structure more reader friendly with shorter paragraphs, sub-sections, bullets, etc.
Update statistics and internal links for recency
Update images to reflect the modern aesthetic

Last but not least, here is an example of what one of SalesHacker’s old pages looked like before Brooklin got his hands on it (thank you, Way Back Machine!)

And here is what the updated page looks like after Brooklin’s team worked their magic.

The difference is pretty clear.

You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:

Brooklin’s favorite content marketing tool is SEMRush
Brooklin isn’t sure whether he likes the phrase “Let’s double click on that." Thankfully he didn’t use the phrase during the episode. Otherwise we’d have to reevaluate our friendship status! (jk).

Proofpoint’s POV:

SEO is a very established practice, even though the algorithms keep changing and tactics keep evolving, but it can be daunting especially for smaller marketing teams. We have definitely been brought in on numerous occasions to do in-depth content audits, and they do take a lot of time and resources. We have also often employed a similar “quick and dirty” method to what Brooklin describes, especially for clients who have a lot of already existing content.

We believe that most companies can simplify SEO to 3 core concepts:

Content quality - the search engines have gotten pretty good at identifying it, so focus on that
Site speed - people don’t have patience and the search engines know that, so make sure your site is fast.
User experience - again, people don’t have patience, so make sure your site is easy to navigate and that your content is easy to consume

Unless you're in the content distribution game like SalesHacker, traffic and conversion rates alone aren’t enough. You need to focus on which content is actually driving pipeline activity and revenue.

It's also important to map your content to various stages in the customer journey so you can better optimize and understand how it’s performing—but that’s a topic for another time.

A bit more about Brooklin:

Brooklin has over 8 years of content marketing experience. Currently he is at SalesHacker as well as working on a number of marketing related side hustles. At SalesHacker he’s responsible for organic traffic, a weekly newsletter, contributor relationships, and a team of contractors who make the magic happen. Brooklin currently lives in Guatemala and will always (ALWAYS) respond to an email with a GIF. He strives to help his clients “tell better stories."

Helpful Links & Resources:

Brooklin Nash's LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/brooklin-nash
Sales Hacker Website: https://www.saleshacker.com/

Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:

Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing

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Welcome to Show Me The Proof, Get To The Point, the B2B marketing podcast where we show you the Proof in the form of case studies and success stories. And we get straight to the Point , so you can learn something valuable and be on your way.

Each week, we’ll feature a top B2B marketing leader and discuss their revenue-generating strategies. Our listeners will get actionable tips and learn how to accelerate growth through seriously smart marketing!

This show is all about the PROOF: what revenue-generating strategies and tactics did you use in your marketing to score big? What lessons did you learn? What would you have done differently?

And we’re also all about the POINT: how can others learn from your success? What tangible tips and advice can you give our listeners in order to improve and enhance their own B2B marketing efforts?

Our goal is to be the podcast all B2B marketers tune in to regularly for top-notch insights from our guests; as well as the show that regularly attracts top-notch guests our listeners know and admire.

Find additional resources on the Proofpoint website, www.proofpoint.marketing, including the full episode library, with extensive show notes, guides, templates and other marketing resources! All episode content will be shared on the Proofpoint social channels, as well as all major podcasting channels, including iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Google Podcasts.

Do you have a killer B2B Case Study you’d like to share on the show? We’re currently looking for AWESOME B2B marketing rockstars and AMAZING case studies to feature on our podcast! Find out more at https://proofpoint.marketing/podcast/.

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