Revenue Marketing: Build for Scale with Podium's SVP, Revenue Marketing Jess Weimer

Hello. Hello everyone. So glad to be here with you today. If you were here for the last session, I do not have jokes like that. So sorry, this will not be funny, but hopefully very informative. So just as a backdrop of this talk, you know, demand generation, a topic that is really near and dear to my heart, has really evolved over the last decade or so and to the point where it somewhat tends to operate in a silo. That function has its own KPIs and can often be disconnected with pipeline velocity and sales. And so revenue marketing. And this talk is going to be about the evolution in my perspective and what that evolution really requires. So my controversial statement is really that demand generation is antiquated. And this is really because marketers purpose has evolved over the last couple decades where we need to start leaning in more to beyond top of funnel metrics and looking at that in isolation and really leaning in to partner with sales to create that pipeline and velocity. So to back up, the original function of demand generation was really about the top of funnel awareness and often vanity metrics that can cloud the picture and so that creates that disconnect with the ability to understand how to really create pipeline and how to create velocity. But what's equally important is that it inhibits us often from understanding a true end to end prospect journey because we're just so focused at the top of the funnel and that as a result tends to lead marketers to look at their tactics in isolation. Oh, I'm just responsible for events, I'm responsible for digital, I'm responsible for field. But like not putting together those connective tissues because we're so focused at what it's achieving and driving at the top. So today I'm gonna talk about three primary ways. There's probably 10 or 20 that revenue marketing has evolved from demand generation, what that evolution really requires. So the first is how we organize and measure, actually looking within our team and our measurements and our KPIs, our role, what it can and should be in creating pipeline velocity to create a true end to end integrated prospect journey. And then the third one is affecting change in the sales ecosystem, really stepping out of our swim lane or what we consider to be our swim lane. So let's take a look at how to actually organize what does great revenue marketing requirements. Well, it requires a lot within the team, but even cross functionally as well. So I recommend doing a gap assessment first to understand where you have holes to fill. Whether it's budget content, your targeting strategy, your talent and work, cross functionally across marketing and within your own team to fill those gaps First, I lead and influence my team to all be revenue marketers regardless of your core function. Whether you're in marketing operations, all the way down to life cycle marketing, no matter what, you are a revenue marketer, you are here to help create demand that will ultimately lead to revenue. So regardless of their core function, they are all aligned to the strategic pillars. What I call the strategic pillars of revenue marketing. But a few examples of how measurement has really evolved from traditional demand generation measurement. So with digital it's not necessarily about cost per lead, number of impressions, number of clicks. In fact, to me it's more about what Personas are coming in at the top of the funnel. How does an entry point change for SMB versus mid market versus enterprise for events, it's no longer just about the boot scans. What is our post show strategy? What are we doing with the SDRs to enable them to carry that messaging through of what we presented at show to continue the prospect's journey? Field marketing and partner marketing, instead of having separate messaging at the top of the funnel, field marketing should bring that messaging throughout as they do acceleration and expansion events and partner marketing. Instead of them creating their own messaging about us, they should co carry that message with us. Eliminating random acts of email marketing, instead establishing lifecycle programs that thoughtfully take a prospect from the top of the funnel to bottom of funnel and even post sales. What does that messaging look like and how do we carry that through? So those are just different ways of how we look beyond just that top of funnel measurement and how we should really be viewing the world in terms of what these functions do. So this is an eye chart. I'm not going to read this slide, but this is a real life slide of how I organize my team at podium. And so the couple takeaways on this. So number one is there should be connective tissue within all of this or you're not creating an integrated prospect journey. So to me these are the strategic pillars of revenue marketing. The other thing I want to call out, which I think is a gap in some organizations because it's not always that first function that you want to fill is that campaign strategy role. So this to me is a critical function of the revenue marketing team that allows us to centralize the vision of what campaign themes we're going to put out. What is the targeting? What does the content bill of materials look like? What does the measurement and KPIs look like? There is a strong partnership with product marketing that is required to achieve what is needed out of this campaign strategy function and then it basically informs all of your orchestration pillars. So that's how we eliminate some of the random acts of marketing and that's how we bring together that connective tissue because it's all centralized on that campaign strategy that you put together with goals and measurement, et cetera. So. Oh, sorry. There we go. All right. So whether you have an ABM approach or wide net phishing, the real success to me of revenue marketing is when you can actually take action on your tactics as a result of your learnings to actually generate and increase how you generate pipeline. And the measurement really goes beyond volume. Again, again, it's not just about the top of the funnel. It's about volume, velocity and conversion. And I know that's no secret. A lot of us know that it is about volume, velocity and conversion. But how many marketing orgs really take the time to address the latter two? Right, we, we know we're on the hook for number one. But velocity and conversion are ways or are areas that marketing needs to lean in more. And that to me helps support the evolution to revenue marketing. So for example, Velocity is not just a sales execution challenge. Revenue marketing through campaign enablement, lifecycle programs and other examples I'm going to talk you through should and can absolutely get involved in creating that velocity. And similarly, every conversion point down the funnel doesn't move a prospect further and further away from marketing's responsibility. In fact, there are areas that we should and can be involved in to optimizing those conversions down funnel. And I'll talk about that shortly. So again, creating pipeline, Velocity is not specifically owned by sales. Okay, so how can revenue marketing actually be invested and involved in helping with that velocity? Do the forensics step out of your swim lane. It's not about our day to day programs. Yes, we're executing channels, we're pulling levers, we're driving that top of the funnel volume. But there is forensics to be done to understand what is happening as we approach creating opportunity and as post opportunity as well. So after the mql, we look towards what becomes an opportunity and let's figure out what we can learn and then let's look beyond the opportunity and figure out what we can learn. So one example is in partnership with product marketing operations sales strategy. Do a deep dive on the lost opportunities. Are we losing because we're not creating enough hook and stickiness at the top of the funnel? Do we have a handoff problem? Is there messaging inconsistencies? Figure out the primary reasons for why we are Losing opportunities, solve for the majority with that. One way that will be really beneficial in solving for that is hearing from your customers directly. So in a prior life, I actually led what I called a voice of a customer deep dive using a third party consulting firm. It was third party intentionally because we didn't want to have any bias when talking to our customers. We wanted them to know they can and should speak freely. And the idea of this was to look at three different buckets of opportunities. Open opportunities we currently had in the pipe, opportunities that we lost and opportunities that we won. What we were looking for was to better understand where we could do better in all stages of our ecosystem from marketing to sales. Why were we losing? Why did people choose us? How do we understand active demand versus latent demand? How do we close the gap on long gestation cycles? There was a lot we knew we wanted to learn and so we took these three buckets to conduct these interviews and we learned a lot. The thing that surprised me the most is I knew there was going to be feedback that came back on our sales execution and changes we need to make in process and things like that. But there was a lot that informed marketing and now we had to step out of our swim lane again and say, okay, so now we have these learnings. What are we going to do on top of our day to day programs to create change and change how we're doing this so that we actually have made use of these learnings. And so what I'm showing here now are different categories of the feedback and themes that came back from this exercise. So there were things about top of funnel programs, There was a lot about sales, pipeline and forecasting, SDR enablement, et cetera. But what I'm showing here is the high level themes of what came back to marketing to do, of what marketing needs to really address. And there was a lot of doubleclick within this. But for example, what got exposed is that we weren't doing enough on the middle and bottom of funnel content and programs. And so people, prospects were starting to get disconnected with us. And so it showed us we needed to actually invest more again, not just focus on that top of the funnel. I hope that's not falling. So all right, we're okay folks. Okay, so, okay, so key takeaways, it's really all about our operating rhythm. So demand generation focused at the top. Revenue marketing, your operating rhythm spans top of the funnel all the way down the funnel. Pre sales and post sales. Organize your team against the strategic pillars, make sure that they have the connective tissues because your focus your endgame here is to create an end to end prospect journey not just drive that volume and broaden your measurement to align with sales. Don't forget about velocity and conversion and the role that your tactics and your orchestration plays a part in that step out of your swim lane you know the catcher's mitt is not just about sales marketing especially revenue marketing really needs to lean in and learn what about that catcher's mitt can inform how we're going to market what we can do differently. It should include customer listening I do recommend it being third party again you get an unbiased understanding of what your prospects and customers are really learning about you what's turning them on what's turning them off and what kills a deal and what gets the deal and really affect change outside of your day to day programs you know don't operate in isolation really broaden cross functionally across marketing but also with sales to be a change agent across the board. Sam.