Feb 18The State of the B2B CMOIntroduction Business-to-business chief marketing officers have dealt with a lot over the last few years: consequential technology shifts, an increasingly customer-led journey, the rise of product-led growth, a massive and fragmented marketing technology landscape, and a global pandemic, prompting many to upend their marketing plans completely. This survey captures practices, performance…CMO11 min read
Feb 15Value pillars: Get your value story straight in 7 stepsOn my first day as CMO at one of my former companies, I spent several hours listening in on a customer call reviewing — of all things — a time-and-motion study they had commissioned to show our product wasn’t delivering as promised. Oof! …Value Proposition4 min read
Sep 21, 2021Three B2B demand generation swing factors to ignore…at your perilProduct? Check. Customer love? Big time. Value prop? Nailed. So why aren’t you generating the leads and pipeline you need? Lots of CEOs blame their demand generation person or program. But it’s not that simple. TL;DR: The three swing factors that make or break demand gen are: 1. ideal customer…Marketing7 min read
Sep 1, 2021Nail your next branding project: Here’s your 7-point checklistNothing strikes fear in the hearts of startup CMOs like a company-wide re-brand. Between finding an agency that won’t bankrupt you, taking on a crushing amount of thankless work, and goat-herding your internal stakeholders, it’s a fraught project to say the least. But when it’s done well, it’s perhaps the…Branding7 min read
Jan 22, 2021Dear tech CEO: Awesome product? The press doesn’t care!(And other torpedoes of truth from the PR front lines.) Tech CEOs, we love ya and all, but we gotta give you some feedback. No matter how cool your product is, the press doesn’t care. Here’s your TL;DR: The media aren’t what they used to be. PR can help you…Public Relations5 min read
Sep 10, 2020Your next board meeting shouldn’t feel like a firing squad. Nine strategies for B2B marketing leaders.Do board meetings give you a stomach ache? The periodic assembly of business leaders known as the board meeting is fraught with anxiety if you’re a B2B marketing leader. Why? Marketing is hard. Expensive. Not always understood. Sometimes not respected. So when board meeting time rolls around and you have…Board Meeting6 min read
Aug 18, 2020How good is your core messaging? Don’t neglect these 8 essentials.How would you feel if you walked into a McDonald’s and, instead of offering you a McChicken, the menu read “MacChicken?” Or if you logged into your instance of Slack and found that threads were called “discussions” and channels were called “topics?” Or if you received a marketing email from…Core Messaging8 min read
Jul 7, 2020B2B segmentation on steroids: Slice and dice your way to high-probability opportunities and repeatable sales playsMost B2B startups do some form of segmentation analysis, but a lot of it isn’t that useful. Usually we segment by company size, vertical, and buyer role. But if that’s where we put our pencils down, we haven’t done our jobs. Here’s why: If you don’t know why — really…B 2 B Marketing6 min read
May 13, 2020Your whole company should walk in your customers’ shoes: 7 steps for making customer empathy part of your cultureWho are the keepers of customer understanding, empathy, and intimacy in your company? If the answer isn’t “all of us,” you may have a problem. Sure, certain people are on the hook for implementation, customer success, and receiving feature requests, but I’m talking about really knowing your customers, understanding what…4 min read
Apr 29, 2020You, too, can do genius competitive analysis: Here’s your six-step checklistAs marketers, one of the most important things we can do is analyze our competitors. The problem is we don’t do it. Or if we do, we do it poorly. There are a million reasons we kick the can down the road on competitive analysis: not enough time, not enough…Competitive Intelligence5 min read
