CMO Conversations with Tricia Gellman

DG sits down with Josh Allen, Drift's Chief Revenue Officer, to go behind the scenes and talk about the sales and marketing teams at Drift, playing the long game, and what's different about marketing in 2019 vs. 2009.

DG talks about the process he uses to create speeches and presentations, the highs and lows of doing big events for your business, and why you shouldn't listen when people say "our customers are not on social media."

The best marketing today has one thing in common: it's real. DG talks about why the best marketing is real, authentic, and human, and why people don't want marketing that feels "manufactured."

You know how you get down those Instagram rabbit holes where you suddenly find yourself on some random profile and have no idea how you got there? That's how DG came up with the idea for this episode. He stumbled upon on the profile of some celebrity trainer he had never heard of, and started reading a post they shared on their 10 commandments for training. And DG liked the idea so much that he sat down in that moment to write down the 10 marketing rules that Drift lives by, like using social proof (aka your customer's words) whenever and wherever you can. Want the other nine commandments? Listen to the full episode.

Your job as a marketer is to paint a picture. Because your buyers – real people – are visual learners. And they need a little hand-holding to guide them to your desired outcome. But in B2B marketing you don't always have images or videos to show, so you have to do that with words. The key is to be as specific as possible in your copywriting. Want to know how to apply this to your next campaign? Listen to the full episode.

Great marketing isn't about sending your emails at 2:08pm on a Tuesday because you read somewhere that it's the best time to send an email. Nope. It's about zigging when everyone else is zagging. But what will it take for B2B marketers to really get out of the echo chamber? DG sits down with Brian Kardon to get find out. Brian is the CMO at Fuze, and before that he served in the same role at Lattice Engines, Eloqua, and Forrester. DG and Brian talk about whether marketers put too much stock in technology, why marketing isn’t for the lazy, why you should answer your next cold call, the benefits of the right peer group, and a lot more.

Are you stuck? Hitting a creative wall? Brain just not working like you want it to? Hey, we've all been there. So on this episode of the Marketing Swipe File, DG shares his four-step formula for getting unstuck and beating writer's block. Give it a listen and you'll be coming up with better ideas in no time.

Talk about a resume. Mike Volpe is the CEO at Lola, where he joined after building HubSpot for eight years (he was one of the five founding team members), and then growing revenue by 500% in two years as the CMO at Cybereason. Mike is one of the best B2B marketers on the planet, and on this episode of the Marketing Swipe File, DG and Mike talk about why your marketing should always try to “date up”, how PR changes as your company grows, why remixing old content ideas is better than finding new ones, why you should hire people who are better than you, and what CMOs need to learn before they can become CEOs.

"Would I respond to this?" That's the question DG asks himself before he sends an email, makes a deck, writes copy for a landing page, or records a podcast episode. Because when there's so much noise already in the market, the worst thing you can do is forget to treat your buyers like humans. So in this episode, DG talks about how you can take the #1 skill that most B2B marketers are missing, turn it into your advantage, and start having more conversations with buyers.

On this episode of the Marketing Swipe File, DG sits down with marketing technology veteran Elle Woulfe, VP of Marketing at PathFactory. Before joining PathFactory, Elle built her career at Lattice Engines, Eloqua, and Backupify where she became well-known for her B2B demand gen and account-based marketing chops. Elle talks to DG about all things ABM, marketing to marketers, setting SEO goals, building and managing remote teams, the secrets to growing your career in marketing, and much more.