The Revenue-Driven CMO

Welcome back to our latest episode of "3-Minute Marketing", where we share actionable ideas & perspectives from the finest minds in growth marketing today.

On today's episode, I chat with Hunter Montgomery, CMO at ChurnZero. Hunter's been in the B2B SaaS game for awhile now, driving marketing growth for brands like Verizon Business, Vocus & Higher Logic.

We decided to change up the format a bit for this episode & just riff on various topics. But at the core of our conversation, we talk about the "unsexy" activities that can actually help you make the biggest impact as a marketing leader.

Welcome back to another exciting episode of “3 Minute Marketing”, where we tap into the minds of some of today’s most brilliant growth marketing thinkers & share their best learnings with you.

Today, I have Scott Baradell with me (CEO at Idea Grove). Scott leads a PR firm that’s doing some innovative work re-imagining the role & impact of PR for B2B tech brands. He’s excited because he’s soon going to be launching a new book called “Trust Signals” (trustsignals.com), which talks all about using PR to build a brand in the modern era.

My question for Scott is, “What does the future of PR look like as you see it?”

Show Notes:

The future of PR is all about securing trust at scale — without trust, lead gen & growth marketing efforts will hit the barren ground.

It’s not just about “media relations” — PR will use all the tools of modern marketing to build trust across all touchpoints in the customer journey.

There are 3 categories of trust signals to measure & optimize…

Category #1 = website signals (like Better BB seals, team photos/bios, etc.)

Category #2 = online (offsite) signals (like social media profiles, review sites, etc.)

Category #3 = SEO signals (like quantity/quality of your backlink profile)

PR will serve as the upfront “relationship building” that fuels the success of the “last mile” (AKA lead gen/demand capture programs)

Welcome back to another exciting episode of “3 Minute Marketing”, where we tap into the minds of some of today’s most brilliant growth marketing thinkers & share their best learnings with you.

Today, I have Scott Baradell with me (CEO at Idea Grove). Scott leads a PR firm that’s doing some innovative work re-imagining the role & impact of PR for B2B tech brands. He’s excited because he’s soon going to be launching a new book called “Trust Signals” (trustsignals.com), which talks all about using PR to build a brand in the modern era.

My question for Scott is, “What does the future of PR look like as you see it?”

This video is the exclusive, “extended cut” video.

????????????????

Show Notes:

The future of PR is all about securing trust at scale — without trust, lead gen & growth marketing efforts will hit the barren ground.

It’s not just about “media relations” — PR will use all the tools of modern marketing to build trust across all touchpoints in the customer journey.

There are 3 categories of trust signals to measure & optimize…

Category #1 = website signals (like Better BB seals, team photos/bios, etc.)

Category #2 = online (offsite) signals (like social media profiles, review sites, etc.)

Category #3 = SEO signals (like quantity/quality of your backlink profile)

PR will serve as the upfront “relationship building” that fuels the success of the “last mile” (AKA lead gen/demand capture programs)

Transcript:

– [Chris] What’s up everybody. And welcome to another episode of three minute marketing. I’m your main man Chris Mechanic here with my good buddy Scott Baradell, Scott runs an amazing B2B PR company out in the Dallas area with some awesome clients that do some fantastic work, we work with them personally. But we’re super excited to have you here, Scott, welcome to the show.

– [Scott] Thank you for having me. It’s great to see you again, and yeah, we’ve enjoyed working with you guys. You guys have done great work for some of our clients.

– [Chris] Yep. I know that you’ve been really busy lately as usual redefining the game basically we were talking earlier about basically PR and, and what it’s going to look like in the future. I know a lot of our audience here are kind of growth marketers, but I think that your take on what the future of PR looks like will be very interesting because at the end of the day, I think a lot of these things are all merging together. So let’s talk about the future of PR as you see it for three minutes and your time starts, now.

– [Scott] Okay. Well talking about the future of the profession, I mean, it is about growth. I mean, we our motto is to help. We help our clients grow through trust. And by that we mean, lead generation is great. Growth hacking is great, but without trust, nothing else matters, everything kind of hit barren ground. And so that’s our job to kind of lay the groundwork to make that ground fertile or for the efforts of legion agencies, growth marketers, and so forth. So those things are all coming together. I believe the future of PR is not going to be about media relations, where the firm, agencies are focused on media coverage. It’s got to be something broader, but it also can’t be, you know, a media relations firm that also does a bunch of marketing stuff and calls itself integrated. That’s a marketing cafeteria.

Welcome back to another exciting episode of "3 Minute Marketing", where we tap into the minds of some of today's most brilliant growth marketing thinkers & share their best learnings with you.

Today, I have Scott Baradell with me (CEO at Idea Grove). Scott leads a PR firm that's doing some innovative work re-imagining the role & impact of PR for B2B tech brands. He's excited because he's soon going to be launching a new book called "Trust Signals" (trustsignals.com), which talks all about using PR to build a brand in the modern era.

My question for Scott is, "What does the future of PR look like as you see it?"

Welcome back to a fresh episode of “3-Minute Marketing”, the podcast where we dive deep into the minds of some of today’s most successful marketers to surface their best tactics and strategies.

Today, I have the pleasure of talking with Niki Hall, CMO at Contentsquare. An experienced marketing leader in tech, Niki recently joined the company to help take this fast-growing company to the next level. This made me curious what marketing leaders can do to maintain or even accelerate the momentum of a brand that’s already on the rise.

So my question for Niki is, “Dive into this concept of the speed of growth. What are the important factors of growth that marketing leaders should consider along the way?”

Show Notes:

While speed is critical for growth, it’s not sustainable without a well-defined vision & strategy.

A better approach is to have a sense of urgency, aligned to your purpose as a marketing organization. This keeps you from becoming reactive & focuses your team on what matters.

Coach your team for success. Niki uses tools like StrengthsFinder to assess her team & guide them to areas where they can make a big impact.

To take Contentsquare global, Niki tasked regional teams with having deep, “inside-out” knowledge of their region. She then created “centers of excellence” for performance & growth, brand, comms & social media with the functional expertise to help enable the regional teams to hit their pipeline targets.

To measure the effectiveness of the Contentsquare brand, Niki leverages the “voice of the customer” by sourcing qualitative & qualitative customer wins.

CEOs are by-and-large numbers-driven. To prove the value of the brand, you need to find data that tells the story of the impact of the brand on the business. Google trends or branded search impression volume can be good metrics to consider for this.

Niki leans heavily on Contentsquare to drive wins across her marketing org. (which makes her an excellent evangelist for the product!)

Welcome back to a fresh episode of “3-Minute Marketing”, the podcast where we dive deep into the minds of some of today’s most successful marketers to surface their best tactics and strategies.

Today, I have the pleasure of talking with Niki Hall, CMO at Contentsquare. An experienced marketing leader in tech, Niki recently joined the company to help take this fast-growing company to the next level. This made me curious what marketing leaders can do to maintain or even accelerate the momentum of a brand that’s already on the rise.

So my question for Niki is, “Dive into this concept of the speed of growth. What are the important factors of growth that marketing leaders should consider along the way?”

This video is the exclusive, “extended cut” video.

????????????????

Show Notes:

While speed is critical for growth, it’s not sustainable without a well-defined vision & strategy.

A better approach is to have a sense of urgency, aligned to your purpose as a marketing organization. This keeps you from becoming reactive & focuses your team on what matters.

Coach your team for success. Niki uses tools like StrengthsFinder to assess her team & guide them to areas where they can make a big impact.

To take Contentsquare global, Niki tasked regional teams with having deep, “inside-out” knowledge of their region. She then created “centers of excellence” for performance & growth, brand, comms & social media with the functional expertise to help enable the regional teams to hit their pipeline targets.

To measure the effectiveness of the Contentsquare brand, Niki leverages the “voice of the customer” by sourcing qualitative & qualitative customer wins.

CEOs are by-and-large numbers-driven. To prove the value of the brand, you need to find data that tells the story of the impact of the brand on the business. Google trends or branded search impression volume can be good metrics to consider for this.

Niki leans heavily on Contentsquare to drive wins across her marketing org. (which makes her an excellent evangelist for the product!)

Transcript:

Chris: Welcome everybody to another episode of Three Minute Marketing. I’m your main man, Chris Mechanic here, co-founder at WebMechanix, veteran performance marketer, and generally nerdy person. Super excited today to have Niki Hall on the show with us. Niki is a very impressive individual. She is currently CMO at Contentsquare, which is a digital experience analytics platform that empowers growth teams with the data that they need to increase revenue, engagement and growth. Prior to that, Niki has been with the who’s who’s of B2B tech brands; Cisco, Polycom, Five9, Selligent and just steadily doing awesome things and posting big wins. She’s also a member of the CMO Council of North America Advisory Board, and an official member of the Forbes Communication Council. Welcome to the show, Niki.

Niki: Thank you, nice to be here.

Chris: Absolutely. Super excited to have you. Well, I know that you’re very, very busy and I know that everybody is really eager to get to the topic of today’s show. So without further ado, I’ve got your question for you. Are you ready?

Niki: I’m ready.

Chris: All right. Talk to me just a bit about Contentsquare’s growth journey and dive into this concept of speed of growth and also just comment on what are the important factors of growth that marketing leaders should consider along the way?

Niki: Okay,

Welcome back to a fresh episode of "3-Minute Marketing", the podcast where we dive deep into the minds of some of today's most successful marketers to surface their best tactics and strategies.

Today, I have the pleasure of talking with Niki Hall, CMO at Contentsquare. An experienced marketing leader in tech, Niki recently joined the company to help take this fast-growing company to the next level. This made me curious what marketing leaders can do to maintain or even accelerate the momentum of a brand that's already on the rise.

So my question for Niki is, "Dive into this concept of the speed of growth. What are the important factors of growth that marketing leaders should consider along the way?"

Welcome to the latest episode of “3-Minute Marketing”, the show where we ask the greatest marketers of our time to reach into their treasure chests and reveal their best marketing gold.

Today, I’m thrilled and honored to be speaking with legendary growth marketing genius Udi Ledergor, CMO at Gong. For those that don’t know yet, Udi is the marketing mastermind that helped Gong become the de facto leader in the revenue intelligence category and grow to a $1B+ valuation.

My question for Udi is, “What are your top 5 secrets for marketing success?”

Show Notes:

Secret #1: Strategy before tactics. Ignore the “shiny objects”

Secret #2: Don’t produce anything you wouldn’t want to consume.

Secret #3: Start outbound on day 1.

Secret #4: Never compromise on the people you hire.

Secret #5: Don’t obsess about measurement. Instead, do what feels right for the brand.

Bonus Tip #1: Learn how your CRO “takes their coffee.”

Bonus Tip #2: Use a conversation intelligence tool to get insight from your sales team, customers & competitors.

Bonus Tip #3: To build your strategy, first define your goals. Then reverse engineer your success.

Bonus Tip #4: Humanize your marketing to connect with your customers.

Bonus Tip #5: Set aside 10-20% of your budget to place “bets” on intuitive plays that are harder to measure.

Welcome to the latest episode of “3-Minute Marketing”, the show where we ask the greatest marketers of our time to reach into their treasure chests and reveal their best marketing gold.

Today, I’m thrilled and honored to be speaking with legendary growth marketing genius Udi Ledergor, CMO at Gong. For those that don’t know yet, Udi is the marketing mastermind that helped Gong become the de facto leader in the revenue intelligence category and grow to a $1B+ valuation.

My question for Udi is, “What are your top 5 secrets for marketing success?”

This video is the exclusive, “extended cut” video.

????????????????

Show Notes:

Secret #1: Strategy before tactics. Ignore the “shiny objects”

Secret #2: Don’t produce anything you wouldn’t want to consume.

Secret #3: Start outbound on day 1.

Secret #4: Never compromise on the people you hire.

Secret #5: Don’t obsess about measurement. Instead, do what feels right for the brand.

Bonus Tip #1: Learn how your CRO “takes their coffee.”

Bonus Tip #2: Use a conversation intelligence tool to get insight from your sales team, customers & competitors.

Bonus Tip #3: To build your strategy, first define your goals. Then reverse engineer your success.

Bonus Tip #4: Humanize your marketing to connect with your customers.

Bonus Tip #5: Set aside 10-20% of your budget to place “bets” on intuitive plays that are harder to measure.

Transcript:

– [Chris] Hey, welcome back, everybody to another episode of Three Minute Marketing, the world’s shortest and highest value per minute marketing podcast. We love to interview growth, marketing leaders and unicorns. We love cross-channel, cross-disciplinary, just kind of growth-minded individuals. So I’m super excited today to have Udi Ledergor on the show today. Udi is a very, very impressive individual. I’ll let you say a couple of things about yourself, but currently he’s heading up marketing at Gong, which is a very hot brand, very sexy brand. I know you guys are in the billions in terms of valuation at this point, and you’ve been there since very early on. So I have so much to talk to you about. It’s unfortunate that this is Three Minute Marketing, but welcome to the show, Udi.

– [Udi] Hey, thanks for having me. Super excited to be here. Yes, I’ve been with Gong for, coming up to five years now. Gong is the fifth company where I was the first marketer and built in marketing team. And this one is definitely the greatest, and growing the company to new heights. So super, super excited to see where we go next.

– [Chris] A hundred percent. So you are so knowledgeable on a variety of topics, I wanted to give you something a little open-ended, so that you could talk about whatever it is that you think is relevant. But my question for you today, is what are your top three or your top five secrets for marketing success?

– [Udi] All right, let’s get going. Top five secrets for marketing success. Number one is strategy before tactics. On the day that you get your email as the new head of marketing, you will start getting emails from every agency, tech vendor and partner who wants to work with you. Ignore them all, figure out your strategy before you send out your first email or do your first social posts,

Welcome back to 3-Minute Marketing, the show where we interview the leading players in growth marketing & get them to share the best plays in their playbooks.

Today, I’m thrilled to be speaking with a unicorn named Shelley Morrison, VP of the Global Demand Center at Domo. Shelley’s had an impressive career trajectory, having overseen digital strategies for nearly a dozen B2B technology brands in the last 5 years alone.

I asked Shelley, “What are some things up-and-coming marketers could do career-wise to get ahead — to get that job they want or be considered for a promotion?”

Show Notes:

When looking for your next move, seek opportunities for challenge & growth.

Ask yourself, “Is it scary?” If yes, that’s a GOOD sign to pursue.

Learn and understand your entire organization to discover how marketing can make the biggest impact.

Make your boss look good by challenging them with newer/better ideas. Then let them run it up the chain.

Advocate for yourself: Tell your manager, “This is where I want to go in my career.” Then work with them to define the milestones to get there and OWN it.

Don’t just personalize in your marketing — humanize. Create an experience (content, etc.) that is designed to solve your prospects’ unique problems.