CMO Conversations with Tricia Gellman

Everyone has ideas and feedback. But that doesn't mean you should listen to everyone. Here's why DG says you should avoid consensus at all costs – and why limiting the number of cooks in the marketing "kitchen" will help you streamline decision-making and ship faster.

CMOs have one of the shortest job tenures in the C-suite. What gives? In this episode recorded live at HYPERGROWTH Boston, DG sits down with Leela Srinivasan (CMO of SurveyMonkey) to find out. DG and Leela talk about what career progression looks like for marketers, why she thinks marketers shouldn't get hung up on their title, and the number one thing she's learned from each of her roles at Bain, LinkedIn, OpenTable, Lever, and SurveyMonkey.

Marketers love case studies. As they should. But on this episode of the Swipe File, DG talks about why it might be time to re-think traditional case studies, and the importance of finding "real proof" out in the wild.

DG sits down with Kate Adams (VP of Demand Generation at Drift) to talk about a big change she recently made to the marketing funnel at Drift.

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.