In this interview with host Steve MacDonald, Amy Kohl, CEO and Founder of AK Operations, shares the revenue-driving activities that, when improved by just 1%, can have a profound impact on team focus and revenue creation from the top to the bottom of the funnel. Amy emphasizes the importance of the quality of the company’s content and assets. When the leadership team grasps the relationship between content and the ability to drive greater pipeline penetration and revenue impact through the power of 1% changes, they are seeing the results much faster than anyone else.

The interview's main takeaway is the continuous pursuit of 1% improvements in all aspects of the sales and marketing strategy. By focusing on small but meaningful enhancements, such as improving click-through rates, delivering high-quality content, fostering collaboration between teams, and personalizing the sales process, companies can achieve significant boosts in conversions and sales.

Amy stresses five main areas to focus on to create your own 1% success strategy, starting with just how powerful the “Power of 1%” truly is:

1. Why focus on the top of the funnel?
2. High-quality content that can multiply your conversion rates
3. Doing better than just playing the numbers game
4. Content themes that add value and conversion
5. Why you must be a partner, not a seller

In this interview, Amy also promises a spreadsheet that demonstrates the power of 1% increases on revenue and was also kind enough to put together a short video walking us through the spreadsheet as well.

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Join host Steve MacDonald in this engaging episode of B2B Marketing Perspectives as he sits down with Darryl Praill, an accomplished four-time CMO and two-time CRO with an impressive track record. Darryl, a renowned content creator and respected figure on LinkedIn, delves into the captivating topic of why B2B CMOs face rapid failure and presents an array of thought-provoking strategies to tackle this issue head-on.

Drawing from his extensive experience, Darryl emphasizes the critical importance of cultivating a deep understanding of external audiences and their needs. However, he also sheds light on a less-discussed aspect: the significance of internal stakeholders in ensuring a CMO's success. Recognizing that the company's leadership holds substantial influence over a CMO's tenure, Darryl underscores the need to foster strong internal relationships, manage expectations, and align marketing efforts with the unique requirements of various stakeholders, from sales to the CFO, CEO, and beyond.

Moreover, Darryl highlights the undeniable value of content creation, ranking it an emphatic 12 on a 1-10 scale for both CMOs and overall company success. Beyond this recognition, Darryl provides unprecedented, in-the-trenches advice on how to effectively collaborate with internal team members, prioritize content creation for demand generation marketing, and ensure seamless integration with sales activities.

Don't miss this captivating interview, where Darryl unravels the mysteries behind the swift failure of B2B CMOs and equips listeners with actionable insights to overcome these challenges.

Learn specifically through a series of highly action-oriented steps as Darryl paces us through the answers to reversing the failure rate of CMOs and achieving great success.

• Why do B2B CMOs fail so quickly?
• What should a CMO start doing?
  • Step 1: Start Talking to Customers
  • Step 2: Start Listening to Sales
  • Step 3: Set expectations with all executive leadership
  • Step 4: How to create a relationship with the head of finance
  • Step 5: How to set expectations around proving marketing’s ROI and overall expectations
  • Step 6: The importance of content to a CMO’s success
  • Step 7: How to get sales to be consumers of your marketing content and start using it
  
  
• What are the most important takeaways for addressing why B2B CMOs fail so quickly?

“You need to make content for all the people in your expanding buying committee, and they're going to advocate for you, or they're going to shoot you down and advocate for another alternative provider based on whether they find the answer to the pain they're experiencing in your solution. And the only way they will find that, because they have the attention span of a gnat, is in your content.” - Darryl Praill

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In this interview, Mariana Just, Vice President of Global Revenue Marketing for Acrolinx, discusses the critical importance of content marketing and how it impacts the overall success of a business in driving revenue. Mariana compares content to oxygen for organizations. She stresses that content is an asset with real, measurable value. Mariana has repeatedly proven that content is essential for demand generation and should not be considered an afterthought. She asserts that content impacts all stages of the buying cycle, serving to educate, sell, and provide a positive customer experience.

Mariana further stresses the importance of developing an opinion and narrative through thought leadership content. She mentions various formats, such as podcasts and fireside chats, that can help create communities and foster trust. Finally, Mariana emphasizes that building trust and becoming a partner to your buyers, rather than just a vendor, is crucial for long-term success.

“There is no demand generation without content. Some organizations say that they need to build their demand generation function and that engine—and want to bring content in later. Absolutely not! You either need to have that content machine going, or you bring them both together at the same time. That is absolutely vital.” - Mariana Just, VP of Global Revenue Marketing at Acrolinx

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Are you looking to increase the conversion rate of your leads? Having a hard time getting your marketing team to work well with sales? Want to have a fully integrated go-to-market effort from initial lead generation all the way through customer retention?

In this interview, Steve MacDonald interviews Nancy Maluso, a seasoned B2B marketing expert with a background as a leading CMO, a Chief Strategy Officer, a Forrester Analyst specializing in B2B GTM consulting, and former Vice President of Sales. Nancy shares her insider insights from consulting with B2B companies while at Forrester to implement sales and marketing strategies from the C-Suite.

Nancy talks about creating a 27% greater return if you have alignment on your executive level across your functional leaders.

To improve their effectiveness, B2B CMOs need to focus on collaboration, communication, and ongoing support for sales. They should have a holistic understanding of the customer beyond digital interactions. Nancy gives high-level strategic advice, combined with highly tactical suggestions like using conversational intelligence tools for listening into sales conversations between salespeople and buyers, learning how the sales story is crafted, and an ongoing study of buyer pain points and needs.

“While at Forrester and consulting with companies, I knew in the first meeting which companies would make it to an integrated go-to-market function and which ones would win just by the behavior of the sales and marketing leaders. What invariably happens is that one is not able to truly understand the value of the other.” - Nancy Maluso

Click through to learn from all nine of Nancy’s top recommendations.

Part one of this serious can be found in an Ebook, "Why B2B CMOs Fail So Quickly."

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Are you struggling with producing demand-generation campaigns that create meaningful sales conversations? Having a hard time expanding and scaling efficiently? Need a new perspective to get back on track or go to the next level?

In this podcast interview, Amy Kohl, CEO and Founder of AK Operations, shares 10 unbeatable go-to-market and conversion strategies that have yielded award-winning results. AK Operations, a fractional sales and marketing powerhouse specializing in scalable go-to-market and revenue operations programs, has mastered these strategies.

A key focus for Amy is the significance of understanding prospects on a profound level. AK Operations creates highly relevant ideal customer profiles by leveraging closed sales revenue data and insights. These profiles are a foundation for developing targeted content that educates and supports B2B buyers. Implementing highly targeted email nurture sequences allows them to swiftly test and refine messaging, resulting in a higher return on investment (ROI) through the initiation and scaling of meaningful sales conversations. Ultimately, the approach centers around staying relevant, providing resources, and genuinely addressing the challenges faced by prospects.

“Without quality content, the truth is that sales are always going to be a lot harder. And I love the consultative nurture aspects of serving first with key content pieces. Content needs to be a priority. And when it's not, you will feel it in the revenue you're able to attain.” - Amy Kohl

Amy underscores three foundational pillars that companies should never overlook: excellent content, strategic marketing automation, and meticulous management of contact databases. These pillars are pivotal in a go-to-market strategy, consistently driving deep pipeline penetration and facilitating revenue growth. 

This interview covers10 unbeatable GTM strategies to address the following questions:

1. How to engage and transition cold prospects into interested sales conversations?
2. How to nurture prospects with the right content that produces the greatest ROI?
3. Five content themes that have been tested and proven to be the most successful.
4. What content do most companies use that you want to stay away from one hundred percent?
5. Is there a direct correlation between high-quality content and generating revenue?
6. How much do you help support your client’s content efforts?
7. How do you test content to increase conversions?
8. How to transition cold email leads into “interested” email subscribers?
9. What goes into the initial cold-email sequence, and what’s the desired outcome or goal?
10. What is the third goal of the initial cold-prospecting emails?

Click through to learn from all 10 of Amy's unbeatable go-to-market recommendations.

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Are you struggling to create content marketing that impacts revenue? Having a hard time justifying growing your content budgets? Want to know how to overcome the biggest content marketing fail?

In this podcast interview, Mary Keough, the Head of Marketing at Map My Customers, sheds light on the Top 10 challenges faced in content marketing in the B2B sector. According to Mary, content holds the utmost significance and should be the focal point of any marketing strategy.

During the discussion with Steve MacDonald, Mary Keough delves into the major internal and skillset obstacles encountered in content marketing. She places great emphasis on securing support from the C-suite or leadership for any content marketing initiative. Additionally, Mary highlights a common oversight in content marketing regarding the selection of appropriate distribution channels. She believes that many B2B companies fail to make the necessary effort to ensure their content is disseminated across the right channels, such as organic social media, email, paid social, and more. Mary underscores the importance of actively selecting and promoting the right content to reach the intended target audience effectively.

Specifically, Mary shares insights into how her B2B company leverages podcasts to produce its highest-quality content. For starters, podcasts serve as a platform for interviewing customers and creating case studies, as well as conducting interviews with prospects to foster relationships. She discusses how podcast creation not only helps her company solidify its product-market fit and go-to-market strategy but also enables them to maintain connections with prospects who may not be ready to make a purchase yet. Finally, Mary emphasizes the significance of broadening perspectives in order to contribute value to the industry and shares her tips on how to grow your content budget that will blow you away.

Learn how Mary overcomes all the most important challenges content marketers face:

• Setting the stage for overcoming challenges to creating great content marketing
• Overcoming the greatest internal challenges
• Overcoming skillset challenges
• Overcoming the biggest content marketing fail
• Overcoming the challenges around content quality
• Overcoming sales challenges
• Putting perspective around content marketing challenges
• Addressing the challenge of how much to spend on content marketing
• The challenges of measuring and reporting on content marketing
• The overall takeaway around the challenges to running successful content marketing
• Overcoming the challenges of growing the content marketing budget

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Is your marketing creating deep pipeline penetration? Tied directly to revenue creation? Are your content, demand gen, and BDR teams fully aligned and collaborating?

In this interview, Acrolinx's VP of Revenue Marketing, Mariana Just, emphasizes the importance of team collaboration in today's complex business landscape. Acrolinx prioritizes pipeline opportunities and aligns the objectives of content marketing, demand generation, and business development teams. Acrolinx's revenue marketing model focuses on the entire sales funnel, with BDRs playing a crucial role in pipeline development. This collaborative approach integrates content marketing and data-driven insights to identify prospects and optimize demand-generation campaigns.

Mariana Just explains how marketing needs to contribute to revenue and how they have an all-hands-on approach to creating pipeline opportunities that go further into the funnel – beyond lead generation and the typical MQL qualification. Her point of view is that there's no demand generation without content marketing, and that everything they spend as a company on demand generation ends up on the desk of the BDR team—thus creating the need for ultimate alignment between these teams.

Listen now to learn all about the Acrolinx success model that is attributed to its shared compensation structure, aligned goals, and culture of collaboration, which transforms marketing into a revenue-creating machine. Mariana answers all these questions below and many more.

• How do you create the ultimate alignment between teams?
• What is your perspective on the team’s roles around MQLs?
• Is there a feedback loop on successful content creation and driving pipeline?
• How is marketing and pipeline penetration handled differently than at other companies?
• What is the biggest difference between a focus on MQL vs. pipeline?
• How do you define the role of the BDR team within pipeline development?
• What is the overall takeaway that you want to leave us with today?

This episode covers lead scoring, aligning with sales, utilizing different content forms, sparking conversations, and Chip's unique approach. The central focus of the discussion revolves around the evolving definition of the marketing qualified lead (MQL). Chip shares his belief that the definition of the MQL needs to evolve and offers valuable insights into the viability of this metric and its relevance to B2B companies.

In the past, the concept of the MQL has been frequently misused and manipulated by marketers, often fixating solely on the initial stages of the marketing funnel. However, Chip emphasizes the importance of looking beyond the top of the funnel and examining the entire customer journey across all channels. He advocates for a collaborative approach between marketing and sales to cultivate demand among a specific set of accounts over time.

During the podcast, Chip House and host Steve MacDonald discuss the evolving nature of the MQL and the need for marketers to adopt innovative strategies to effectively reach their target audience. They explore the role of Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) and how they can be leveraged to engage with the 97% of leads that don't fit the traditional definition of an MQL. This conversation provides valuable insights for B2B marketers seeking to navigate the changing landscape of lead qualification and optimize their marketing efforts.

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In this episode, fractional CMO Michael Baer argues that a strong brand and a comprehensive understanding of the customer are prerequisites for sustainable growth. Companies can create content that fosters meaningful interactions with their brand only when they truly comprehend their customers and their needs. By leveraging this understanding, businesses can develop a compelling and attractive differentiating factor that resonates with their target audience.

Michael goes on to emphasize that content acts as the lifeblood or 'oxygen' for any B2B brand. It catalyzes customers to engage with the company and begin envisioning it as a potential solution to their problems. By consistently providing valuable and relevant content, businesses can establish themselves as industry leaders with a unique POV and build trust among their audience.

Tune in to this enlightening episode as we explore the significance of content marketing in the B2B landscape and unravel the secrets to creating impactful and engaging content that captivates customers. Join us as we gain valuable insights from Michael Baer and Steven MacDonald on becoming a content-driven powerhouse in the B2B world.

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Dawn Crew, a three-time B2B SaaS CMO, emphasizes the significance of content to marketing and sales success. The conversation delves into a range of six additional must-have tips on.

• How important is content to the role of marketing?
• How to use content to spark new conversations?
• How to qualify lead conversations in preparation for sales?
• How do you address the buyers that aren’t in the market today?
• How to create highly valuable, non-superficial content?
• Final words of wisdom from Dawn

This episode contains Dawn's invaluable marketing insights accumulated from numerous experiences throughout the years, conveniently compiled in a single interview.

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