Marketing Gets Real: Recent Episodes
Unreal Digital Group
No filters. Just B2B marketers sharing real stories of their successes, failures, and everyday adventures.
In a world where digital marketing is king, it's easy to forget the power of good old-fashioned event marketing. But this tried and true approach can still be highly effective in engaging potential customers and driving leads. All that said, event marketing is its own breed and can lead to unique mishaps and uh-oh moments.
Stefanie Maragna is a passionate, tenacious, motivated sales and marketing professional with 20+years of experience in both sales and marketing fields. She has a strong track record of success in sales, field marketing, events, customer advocacy programs, and marketing communications. She has worked both in FMCG, Not-for-Profit and IT. Currently managing corporate marketing at Sage Intacct, Stefanie has many experiences and “Oh-Shit” moments to share, highlighting what can happen when working events for enterprise-level brands.
Tune in to this episode of the Marketing Gets Real podcast, where our hosts Cari and Dana talk with Stefanie about the value of having a sales background in a marketing role. The group also discusses Stefanie’s “Ha-Ha” moments in event marketing, including running events while struggling with morning sickness and losing a whole truckload of branded swag for an event!
Other talking points include:
- What it’s like to work and market in different countries and how that impacts campaign planning.
- Stefanie’s experience owning the corporate marketing function at Sage Intacct.
- The importance of blurring lines between sales and marketing and how those relationships impact the success of both departments.
- Other surprise moments in event marketing include coping with morning sickness during a big keynote and handling the occasional signage issue.
RELATED LINKS
- Connect with Stefanie on Twitter and LinkedIn.
- Learn more about Sage Intacct here!
- Learn more about Unreal Digital.
Marketing leaders know that building a customer-centric organization is essential for success in the modern marketplace. And while there are many different approaches to achieving this goal, one critical element is cultivating a diversity, equality, and inclusion (DE&I) mindset within your team.
With a great passion for being a driving force for innovative change, Deanna Ransom is a woman on a mission to make a difference through empowering women and DE&I positive businesses. She is a leader with over 25 years of growth and leadership within B2B and non-profit sectors, recently serving as the Global Head of Marketing Services and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Chairperson for Televerde. Deanna helped develop a new go-to-market strategy transforming and modernizing the business while delivering organizational change by leading the cultural transformation initiative for the company.
As the Executive Director of Women in Revenue, Deanna and the team at Women in Revenue are helping businesses grow and scale with a DE&I mindset. They continue to help women in revenue-impacting business roles through education, support, mentorship, and networking opportunities.
Tune in to this episode of the Marketing Gets Real podcast, where our hosts Cari and Dana talk with Deanna about the current state of diversity, equality, and inclusion in the marketplace. The group also discusses Deanna’s biggest “Oh Shit” moment, in which her team was persuaded into a big (and unsuccessful) product marketing campaign and its impact on customer relationships.
RELATED LINKS
- Connect with Deanna on Twitter and LinkedIn.
- Learn more about Women in Revenue.
- Check out upcoming events from Women in Revenue.
- Learn more about Unreal Digital.
Businesses are forced to take a look at their marketing messaging when surprises of any severity occur. To ensure that they are not putting any customer relationships in danger, businesses have to pull back the reins on their marketing efforts in certain situations–from industry speedbumps to global pandemics!
While this is understandable, it can also be quite detrimental to a company's bottom line. So, what is the right way to handle marketing during unforeseen circumstances? And what should you avoid doing?
Meg Hoyecki serves as Vice President of Marketing, leading go-to-market strategy, communications, and voice-of-customer initiatives for SOC Telemed. Meg brings 15 years of healthcare marketing expertise and has been part of SOC Telemed’s leadership team since 2017. Prior to SOC Telemed, Meg led marketing teams at high-growth companies including Ciox Health and Optum, specializing in creating awareness and demand in new markets with innovative solutions. Meg has a plethora of experience marketing in a chaotic market, and has many stories to share highlighting what it takes to make messages stick with patient-first prospects.
Tune in to this episode of the Marketing Gets Real podcast, where our hosts Cari and Dana talk with Meg about some of their “Oh Shit” moments in their career, including the headaches that happen when a healthcare company goes public and needs to set up a BDR team during a global pandemic! The group also discusses how messaging has grown evermore important at a time where buyer expectations and needs can change at the drop of a hat.
RELATED LINKS
- Connect with Meg on LinkedIn.
- Get some marketing inspo from the SOC Telemed Blog!
- Learn more about Unreal Digital.
It's no secret that employees are the lifeblood of any company - they're the ones who keep things moving and make things happen. But while it's important to focus on employee satisfaction and engagement, it's also crucial to remember that companies have goals to meet as well. So how do you balance the two?
Ari Fefferman works at Fitbit, recently acquired by Google, for the company’s Health Solutions team as Director of Demand Generation. She has worked in digital marketing since she was 16 with a variety of clients ranging from small business retail to global financial services. She transitioned to in-house marketing roles with Google and a cloud monitoring software startup called SignalFx, which is now a part of Splunk.
Tune in to this episode of the Marketing Gets Real podcast, where our hosts Cari and Dana talk with Ari about what it’s like to run marketing at startup and enterprise companies alike. The group also discusses how to work with lean resources and walking the tough tightrope of balancing employees’ professional goals and company goals.
RELATED LINKS
- Connect with Ari on Twitter and LinkedIn.
- Check out Fitbit Health Solutions!
- Learn more about Unreal Digital.
Marketing leaders know that in order to be effective they need to be flexible. The marketplace is always evolving and with it, the needs of the customer. To keep up, marketing teams must be able to rapidly adapt their strategies and tactics.
Mac McConnell is a veteran in the marketing world and business tech market. As the former VP of Marketing at ServiceChannel, he saw firsthand how flexible teams are helping companies overcome uncertain market conditions and create unique ways to provide awesome customer experiences. He also helped many businesses adopt marketing automation as one of the co-Founders of Bluebird Strategies, now part of Square2 Marketing.
Tune in to this episode of the Marketing Gets Real podcast, where our hosts Cari and Dana chat with Mac about how being flexible can help in times of uncertainty–from poor budget choices to a full-blown pandemic. The group also talks about the value of persona messaging, so demand gen, content marketing and product marketing are working from the same playbook.
RELATED LINKS
- Connect with Mac on Twitter and LinkedIn.
- Learn more about Unreal Digital.
Sales and marketing teams have a unique but symbiotic relationship. Sales need marketing to generate leads, while marketing needs sales to provide feedback on what’s working and what’s not. As one can expect, this can lead to massive mixups and mistakes that offer valuable lessons to learn.
Darin Medeiros is the Head of Sales for the Americas at GO1, a continuous learning platform startup that provides a single access point for the world’s best online and instructor-led training content. He has experience starting up a wide array of companies, which means he has a lot of great experience going to market with brand-new companies looking to drive demand and fill pipeline.
Tune in to this episode of the Marketing Gets Real podcast, where our hosts Cari and Dana chat with Darin about his experience bringing a brand-new company to market, memorable failures around sales leads, alignment with marketing, and a better understanding of what true event ROI looks like.
RELATED LINKS
- Connect with Darin on Twitter and LinkedIn.
- Learn more about GO1.
- Learn more about Unreal Digital.
For some people, marketing is a second language. For others, it's a foreign language altogether. No matter where you fit on the spectrum, we all make mistakes from time to time.
Sandra Freeman is the VP of Strategic Marketing at Demandbase, a software company specializing in helping companies give better account-based experiences (ABX). Sandra has many years of experience running marketing campaigns - both demand gen and ABM - at companies like Apple, Marketo, and Engagio before it was acquired by Demandbase in 2020. With all of her experience, she has seen her share of marketing mess ups! Even seasoned professionals can hit some bumps along the way when working to drive revenue.
Tune in to this episode of the Marketing Gets Real podcast, where our hosts Cari and Dana chat with Sandra about her shit-hit-the-fan moments and the lessons learned from misspelling your CEO’s name and crying after webinars. The group also share some of their snafus with in-person events, including the infamous “Silverado Weekend Mistake.”
RELATED LINKS
- Connect with Sandra on Twitter and LinkedIn.
- Learn more about Demandbase.
- Learn more about Unreal Digital.
As marketing leaders, we are always looking for ways to stay ahead of the curve and create amazing customer experiences (CX) that keep our customers coming back. That strategy tends to differ depending on the size of your organization. Ultimately, the scale of the initiative may change, but the end goal of offering amazing customer experiences stays the same.
Ray Kemper, VP of Marketing at the API management platform Axway, and Paula Sansburn, the company’s Global Director of Campaign Marketing, are no strangers to the marketing world. Both have many years of experience heading up marketing for local brands and major global enterprises like Deloitte and Televerde. With that experience comes a lot of lessons learned about go-to-market strategies based on the size of the organization.
Tune in to this episode of the Marketing Gets Real podcast, where our hosts Cari and Dana chat with Ray and Paula about the good, bad, and ugly of transitioning from local- to global-sized organizations. The group also discusses their “Oh Shit” moments and lessons learned from them, including building a balanced global and local marketing strategy and all the fun surprises when launching a new website.
RELATED LINKS
- Connect with Ray on Twitter and LinkedIn.
- Connect with Paula on Twitter and LinkedIn.
- Learn more about Axway.
Learn more about Unreal Digital.
It's no secret that managing partner expectations in the B2B world is a difficult task. The marketing team has to be strategic about how they communicate with their partners, and it can be hard to strike the perfect balance between being clear about what you are providing while also maintaining an air of mystery.
Ricky Spiese, Partner Marketing Manager at Terminus, is known in the industry for his aptitude for learning and understanding the market. Coming from a sales background, he epitomizes the importance of clear expectations with prospects. And as a partner marketing manager, those learnings are now helping partners clearly understand messaging and value propositions. But, that doesn’t mean that the road to this point in his career didn’t have a few speed bumps along the way!
Tune in to this episode of the Marketing Gets Real podcast, where our hosts Cari and Dana chat with Ricky about his career–including his start in the SDR world and his climb to managing partner marketing at the account-based engagement company Terminus. The group also discusses Ricky’s “Oh Shit” moments in his career, like a little MDF mishap that led to some serious lessons learned in expectation management with third-party partners. We also hear great stories about webinar snafus and how to adapt and pivot to grow as a marketer.
RELATED LINKS
- Connect with Ricky on LinkedIn!
- Learn more about Terminus.
- Learn more about Unreal Digital.
To drive demand effectively, you need to be able to innovate even when your teams aren’t ready. That’s why you must leverage all the information your funnel can provide to make strategic decisions that move the needle.
At some point, every company will reach an inflection point where they have two choices. They can either innovate and stay on top of the latest growth cycle, or get overtaken by a disruptor that changes how things are done forever. These points in your career can be referred to tenderly as “Oh Shit” moments. Jeff Marcoux doesn't believe in staying still; as a long-time marketing executive for several global organizations, his new venture at Sphere Strategy aims to help brands market themselves the way they want – instead of how the search algorithms want it.
Tune in to this episode of the Marketing Gets Real podcast to learn about understanding the “full funnel” and truly targeting it when executing marketing initiatives. You’ll also learn sales enablement strategies to ensure your whole organization is rowing in the same direction.
RELATED LINKS
- Connect with Jeff on Twitter or LinkedIn!
- Learn more abouts Sphere Strategy.
- Learn more about Unreal Digital.
Revenue marketing is a practice that has steadily grown in popularity. A recent study by the CMO Council showed how revenue marketing helped generate $7.5B of incremental sales for companies last year. There are many key aspects of this growing trend and it completely changes the game for marketers on both sides of the equation - buyers and sellers alike.
Stacy Gardner, Senior Director of Marketing Programs at Bottomline Technologies, is one of many amazing women leading the charge in revenue marketing practice within the marketplace. She leads a team of revenue marketers who execute and delight across the customer lifecycle, driving pipeline. Done correctly, revenue marketing allows your team to build great relationships with key stakeholders across the organization to set - and exceed - benchmarks for pipeline contribution.
Tune in to this episode of the Marketing Gets Real podcast, where our hosts Cari and Dana chat with Stacy about the evolution of revenue marketing, as well as its history and what she thinks are the key characteristics of a revenue marketer. The group also discusses Stacy’s “Oh Shit” moments in her career, like trying to launch an ABM program in only three months and snafus in marketing/sales partnership assumptions.
RELATED LINKS
- Connect with Stacy on Twitter and LinkedIn!
- Learn more about Bottomline Technologies.
- Learn more about Unreal Digital.
In today’s business world, how can we connect with potential customers on a deeper level, one that goes beyond simply trying to understand their needs and figuring out how your product can fill them? What if you could tap into their desires and motivations, and create a connection that's more human?
It may sound like wishful thinking, but it's possible - and B2B marketing and sales teams are starting to take notice. By creating authentic connections with their buyers, they're able to sell their products in a more believable way, build trust, and differentiate themselves from the competition. So how can you go about creating these types of connections in your own work?
This is why Unreal Digital founders Dana Harder and Cari Baldwin decided to launch this podcast. Both Dana and Cari have an amazing history in the B2B marketing and demand generation world. They founded Unreal Digital – and created this podcast – to fill a need in the marketplace to help educate listeners about how to produce authentic marketing and human connection to drive business growth.
Tune in to the first episode of the Marketing Gets Real podcast, where our hosts Cari and Dana discuss their backgrounds in the business world and why this podcast came to be. You’ll also be introduced to this season’s focus, where Dana and Cari will talk with guests about their “Oh Shit” moments and all the lessons that can be learned from “failing fast” in the marketing and content world. Listeners will also hear Dana and Cari’s own personal “Oh Shit” moments in their careers and what they learned from those mistakes.
RELATED LINKS
- Connect with Cari on LinkedIn.
- Connect with Dana on LinkedIn.
- Learn more about Unreal Digital.
B2B marketers know how to make plans. Global, multi-channel campaign plans supporting millions in pipeline. Fast-moving career plans spanning the world’s leading companies. But behind it all are real people living and learning from the joys, the pains, and the surprises that make B2B marketing so exciting. And we want all the details.
On the Marketing Gets Real podcast, hosts Cari Baldwin and Dana Harder — founders of demand gen agency Unreal Digital Group — dig into the real lives and everyday adventures of fellow B2B marketers. So grab a glass of something and join Cari, Dana, and their guests for lots of learning and laughter — and maybe a wine recommendation or two.