Qualified
Part 8: Top Marketing Leaders Share Their Most Uncuttable Demand Gen Budget Items
This is part eight of our special mini-series revealing the top demand gen budget items mentioned by the marketing leaders who’ve appeared on DGV. Tune in to hear all the budget items our guests couldn’t live without!
For more than a decade, B2B sales and marketing teams have been operating the same way. CMOs spend tons of money to drive qualified leads to your website, and if they want to talk to sales, you ask them to fill out lead capture forms that always end with "Thanks, someone will get back to you shortly."​ The problem? Buyers move onto other things and sales reps struggle to engage buyers and start the selling process. Simply put, the process that marketing teams use to pass leads to sales is broken. A new category of software has emerged, and it's called Conversational Marketing. The concept is simple. When qualified leads land on your site, we'll alert your reps in real-time and allow both parties to start a conversation instantly via chat, voice calls, and screen sharing. Conversational marketing is the rare opportunity for your company to completely change the game on how you interact and engage with qualified prospects. Your buyers will be thrilled about the new experience and your business will feel the impact to the metrics that matter most, pipeline and revenue.
INDUSTRY
Computer Software
FOUNDED
2018

For more than a decade, B2B sales and marketing teams have been operating the same way. CMOs spend tons of money to drive qualified leads to your website, and if they want to talk to sales, you ask them to fill out lead capture forms that always end with "Thanks, someone will get back to you shortly."​ The problem? Buyers move onto other things and sales reps struggle to engage buyers and start the selling process. Simply put, the process that marketing teams use to pass leads to sales is broken. A new category of software has emerged, and it's called Conversational Marketing. The concept is simple. When qualified leads land on your site, we'll alert your reps in real-time and allow both parties to start a conversation instantly via chat, voice calls, and screen sharing. Conversational marketing is the rare opportunity for your company to completely change the game on how you interact and engage with qualified prospects. Your buyers will be thrilled about the new experience and your business will feel the impact to the metrics that matter most, pipeline and revenue.

Episode Summary

 Every week on Demand Gen Visionaries we sit down with marketing leaders from some of the world’s largest and fastest-growing companies to uncover the demand gen strategies that have been fundamental to their skyrocketing success.

In each episode, we ask our marketing-leader guests which three areas of investment are most important to their demand gen initiatives. Tune into this special mini-series to hear the budget items our CMO guests can’t live without!

Find parts one, two, three, four, fivesix& seven

Key Takeaways

  • Brand is who you are, product marketing and demand gen is what you do
  • The most important thing with your content investments is to invest in creating really good content
  • You have to trust that you're hitting the audience the right way and you're getting your message out there the right way

Quotes

“Data can get you really helpful insights and tell you if you’re way off base, but sometimes magic is figuring out the combination of what your customer says they want and what’s aligned to their value, how much you have to shift their perception and change their mindset of what your product can be and can do and then find the sweet spot.” - Dylan Steele, CMO of Coalition Inc.
People respond well to strong storytelling, no matter if you’re in a consumer context or you’re in a B2B context because even in B2B, there are people making decisions.” - Chris Lynch, CMO of Mindtickle
“Adapt and try to not have the same approach, not only the language but also try to adapt to the mindsets of the region, the countries that you’re going to enter in and you’re going to target.” - Marie Hillion, Head of Marketing, Livestorm
"Marketing is an invaluable tool and partner. When done well and when paired well, and we all consider the needs of the organization and what role we each play, it’s really a powerful tandem when you go to market if things are aligned." - Dan Verley, SVP of Sales, Canon Solutions America
"Brand is who you are, product marketing and demand gen is what you do. And so those two things work really well together when they’re aligned, when they’re not aligned, it can be pretty painful." - Cindy Knezevich, SVP of Brand and Communications, Salesloft
There's an old saying, the content is king and there's a reason for it. Organic search is all about content, same with paid search, but organic much more so, and the nurture you’re building to get them to engage with you. - Micheline Nijmeh, CMO, JFrog
“I think at the end of the day, the most important thing with your content investments is to invest in creating really good content.” - Ryan Bonnici CMO, Gympass
“We’re going to go to market with both a seller and buyer campaign, and this is where the brand becomes sort of a glue, we make sure that the way that we’re presenting ourselves is cohesive.” -Palmer Houchins, VP of Brand Marketing & Communications at G2
“You have to trust that you're hitting the audience the right way and you're getting your message there the right way. We want to be the right message, we want to be with the right partners and that's true of any influencer, right? As long as you have the right partner it's probably going to be a really good partnership”. - Rich Donahue, CMO of IBotta 
“It has to be a mission that you stand behind and it has to be something you can differentiate. There are many products out there in the world that like you can’t tell the difference between two of them, and if you can’t, it’s then really hard to differentiate. It’s really hard to do great marketing, you have to choose an opportunity where you feel like you can do something with your skill, with that marketing.” - Maria Pergolino, CMO of ActiveCampaign

Episode Transcript

Episode Timestamps

Part seven of this special mini-series features 10 CMOs and marketing leaders from some of the world's fastest-growing companies, including:

*(02:07) Dylan Steel, CMO of Coalition

*(03:56) Chris Lynch, CMO of MindTickle

*(04:47) Marie Hillion, Head of marketing at Livestorm

*(06:25) Dan Verley, SVP of Sales Workplace Technologies at Canon

*(10:18) Cindy Knezevich, SVP of Brand and Communications at SalesLoft

*(12:48) Micheline Nijmeh, CMO at JFrog

*(14:53) Ryan Bonnici, CMO at Gympass 

*(16:37) Palmer Houchins, VP of Brand Marketing & Communications at G2

*(17:55) Rich Donahue, CMO of IBotta 

*(20:38) Maria Pergolino, CMO of ActiveCampaign

Sponsor

Demand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

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