Growing Unicorns

In this conversation, Robin Izsak-Tseng, VP of Revenue Marketing at G2, talks about growth and marketing. Hear about how to organize and grow a marketing team, different attribution models, when marketing teams should switch to outbound acquisitions, and best practices for influencer marketing and customer advocacy, and the team has some Real Talk about tactics.

[01:02] Introducing Robin

[02:47] Organizing a marketing team

[06:47] The evolution of a marketing team

[09:46] What should your first marketing team look like?

[11:46] Demand gen, growth marketing, and growth hacking

[20:25] From bottoms-up to outbound acquisition

[28:25] Influencer marketing and customer advocacy best practices

[34:12] Having an executive with marketing ambition

[35:57] Multi-touch attribution models

[42:37] The “Tactics” Real Talk

LinkedIn

Website

LinkedIn - Elias Rubel, Matter Made

Twitter - Elias Rubel

Matter Made Website

LinkedIn - Korina Edwards, Matter Made

Twitter - Korina Edwards

Matter Made Website

LinkedIn - Holly Chen, ExponentialX

Twitter - Holly Chen

ExponentialX Website

In this conversation, Mike Brooks, SVP of Revenue at WeatherBug, talks about growth, advertising, and data. Hear about the relationship between media buying and growth, how iOS is changing the landscape, the impact on MTA, the prominence of community-led growth, and the idea of the Chief Growth Officer at companies.

[01:08] Introducing Mike and WeatherBug

[03:44] Media buying and growth trends

[12:35] What’s happening with iOS?

[21:10] Is MTA dead?

[28:05] When to start considering MTA

[30:14] The role of first-party data

[31:46] Community-led growth

[36:09] Influencer marketing and B2B

[39:32] Customer advisory boards

[45:12] iOS and PLG

[48:24] Will Chief Growth Officer be a thing?

LinkedIn

Website

LinkedIn - Elias Rubel, Matter Made

Twitter - Elias Rubel

Matter Made Website

LinkedIn - Korina Edwards, Matter Made

Twitter - Korina Edwards

Matter Made Website

LinkedIn - Holly Chen, ExponentialX

Twitter - Holly Chen

ExponentialX Website

In this conversation, the team talks about sales and marketing. Hear about converting free apps to paid subscriptions, how to structure a data/analytics team, the first steps to take after building the PLG engine, using early engagement to determine long-term retention, and the main challenges when building a PLG-to-sales motion.

[00:43] Introducing the team

[02:01] Converting free apps to paid subscriptions

[04:21] What to do first after building the PLG engine

[09:35] PLG vs Sales-led motion tools

[10:44] Building a sales-led motion in a historically PLG company

[16:25] Determining long-term retention from early engagement

[21:38] The biggest challenges in building up a PLG-to-sales motion

[23:59] How to structure a data/analytics team

[33:32] PLG and Account-Based Marketing

LinkedIn - Elias Rubel, Matter Made

Twitter - Elias Rubel

Matter Made Website

LinkedIn - Korina Edwards, Matter Made

Twitter - Korina Edwards

Matter Made Website

LinkedIn - Holly Chen, ExponentialX

Twitter - Holly Chen

ExponentialX Website

In this conversation with Chang Chen, Head of Growth and Marketing at Otter.ai, she talks about self-serve and growing marketing teams. Hear about structuring marketing and sales, ways to identify users, balancing automation and humans, which companies are suitable for the PLG model, customer success, how to avoid pitfalls when working with a sales team, and the role of marketing in product-led motions.

[01:05] Introducing Chang Chen

[02:32] Introducing the co-hosts

[04:18] Structuring marketing and sales at Otter.ai

[08:16] Contacting the salesperson after signing up for Otter.ai

[10:03] Identifying users

[12:12] The Tech Stack at Otter.ai

[14:06] Lead scoring model signals

[18:56] The self-serve marketing funnel

[23:32] Automated email versus a real person

[29:34] What type of companies are suitable for a PLG model?

[32:49] Common pitfalls when working with a sales team

[36:30] Where does customer success sit?

[38:06] How to build growth teams

[42:50] Product marketing and the product-led motion

LinkedIn

Website

LinkedIn - Elias Rubel, Matter Made

Twitter - Elias Rubel

Matter Made Website

LinkedIn - Korina Edwards, Matter Made

Twitter - Korina Edwards

Matter Made Website

LinkedIn - Holly Chen, ExponentialX

Twitter - Holly Chen

ExponentialX Website

In this conversation, the team talks about all things marketing, sales, and collaboration. Hear about how to align the end-user experience with the company’s value, the importance of cross-department communication, balancing product, marketing, and sales, what the ideal Fortune100 company looks like, focusing on the needs of team members, and the role of creativity in collaborations.

[00:39] Introducing the co-hosts

[04:59] The ups and downs of doing product sales marketing

[07:10] Aligning the end-user experience with the company’s value

[13:15] The balancing act: product, marketing, and sales

[26:18] Designing a Fortune100 company from scratch

[32:26] Holly’s radical proposal

[34:32] Creating levels of security, control, and belonging for team members

[41:36] Does collaboration stifle or encourage creativity?

LinkedIn - Elias Rubel, Matter Made

Twitter - Elias Rubel

Matter Made Website

LinkedIn - Korina Edwards, Matter Made

Twitter - Korina Edwards

Matter Made Website

LinkedIn - Holly Chen, ExponentialX

Twitter - Holly Chen

ExponentialX Website

In this conversation with Tiffany Tai, SVP of Enterprise, Education, and Partnerships at Canva, she talks about Canva’s growth, creating a customer-centric product, and some of the investment skillsets that have paid off over time. Hear about how to grow against entrenched incumbents, the education component for SaaS companies, solving for the needs of different generations of users, finding the highest ROI situations, the economics of what matters, and how to structure partnership teams.

[00:55] Introducing Tiffany

[02:56] Introducing the co-hosts

[04:22] Tiffany’s work at Canva

[09:17] Canva’s marketing

[11:15] Getting into partnerships

[13:20] Thinking about growth against an entrenched incumbent

[16:54] Education for SaaS companies

[18:36] Generational use of Canva

[22:11] What is an ROI that matters?

[25:47] Starting as individual products

[29:51] Thinking about the economics

[37:08] Investment skillsets that have paid off over time

[42:45] What makes Canva special against the competition?

[43:45] Converting from Freemium to Premium

[47:10] Structuring partnership teams

LinkedIn

Website

LinkedIn - Elias Rubel, Matter Made

Twitter - Elias Rubel

Matter Made Website

LinkedIn - Korina Edwards, Matter Made

Twitter - Korina Edwards

Matter Made Website

LinkedIn - Holly Chen, ExponentialX

Twitter - Holly Chen

ExponentialX Website

In this conversation, the team talks about bottoms-up versus sales-led motions, and how to choose a motion. Hear about hiring for each of the motions, the importance of having the motions meet in the middle, examples of how the bottoms-up motion can help the top-down motion, how to approach growth marketing in a sales-led motion, and life cycle marketing.

[00:58] Introducing the co-hosts

[02:23] Can/should anyone do bottoms-up?

[05:49] Hiring for each motion

[06:39] When does sales touch the end users?

[11:15] At what point does top-down and bottoms-up meet in the middle?

[14:00] How the bottoms-up motion helps the top-down motion

[16:13] Factors that influence which motion to choose

[24:11] Determining what was sales qualified at Slack

[26:20] Introducing Slack’s sales team

[33:41] How to approach growth marketing in a sales-led motion

[38:39] How closely should marketing be tied to analytics and roadmap prioritisation?

[40:39] The silo mistakes

[41:55] Looking at usage analytics

LinkedIn - Elias Rubel, Matter Made

Twitter - Elias Rubel

Matter Made Website

LinkedIn - Korina Edwards, Matter Made

Twitter - Korina Edwards

Matter Made Website

LinkedIn - Holly Chen, ExponentialX

Twitter - Holly Chen

ExponentialX Website

In this conversation with Paul D’Arcy, CMO at Miro, he talks about his passion for driving growth, some of the campaigning strategies at Miro, ad memory effects on sales, and how to approach a rebrand. Hear about some fundamental frameworks, the blending of performance and brand, the many top-of-mind strategic and tactical challenges, the future with shifting ad tech, and defining and creating a category.

[01:36] Paul’s background

[02:20] Introducing our co-hosts

[04:32] Performance and brand marketing

[06:07] Fundamental frameworks

[12:14] Blending performance and brand

[17:51] Top-of-mind strategic and tactical challenges

[21:19] Technical audiences

[26:08] How do we prepare for a future less reliant on shifting ad tech?

[29:10] Miro’s ad campaigns

[38:49] The memory effects on sales

[42:53] The Dropbox story

[46:52] Category definition and creation

[49:08] Approaching a rebrand

[51:40] Paul’s nominees

LinkedIn

Twitter

Miro Website

Science of Revenue

LinkedIn - Elias Rubel, Matter Made

Twitter - Elias Rubel

Matter Made Website

LinkedIn - Korina Edwards, Matter Made

Twitter - Korina Edwards

Matter Made Website

LinkedIn - Holly Chen, ExponentialX

Twitter - Holly Chen

ExponentialX Website