Why Attend?

• Refine Your Marketing Strategy: Learn to align your teams and focus on the accounts that matter most.
• Data-Driven Insights: Master intent data to optimise your campaigns and budgets.
• Proven ABM Frameworks: Take away actionable strategies for immediate impact.

Agenda

• 8:30 AM: Registration and Breakfast
• 9:15 AM: Workshop Begins
• 11:30 AM: Event Close

Location: Haymarket Hotel, 1 Suffolk Place, London, SW1Y 4HX

The post Revenue Rise: Start 2025 Strong with Account-Based Strategies appeared first on Demandbase.

Transitioning from small-scale pilot programs to enterprise-wide ABM campaigns can feel overwhelming—but it doesn’t have to be. Join us for an exclusive webinar where we’ll break down the process and provide actionable insights to help you:

• Expand ABM across your organization with proven frameworks and strategies.
• Align marketing and sales teams for maximum impact.
• Leverage data and technology to identify high-value accounts and drive engagement.
• Measure success at scale with metrics that matter to your business.

Event Details

Date: Thursday 23rd January

Time: 2:00 PM GMT

What You’ll Learn

This session is designed for B2B marketers and sales leaders looking to maximise ROI and achieve measurable growth with ABM. You’ll gain:

• Practical guidance on scaling ABM beyond the pilot stage.
• Real-world examples from organisations successfully implementing enterprise-wide ABM.
• Expert tips on overcoming common scaling challenges, from resource allocation to technology adoption.

Don’t miss this opportunity to take your ABM strategy from good to great. Whether you’re just starting with ABM or looking to expand, this webinar is your roadmap to success.

The post Unlock the Power of ABM at Scale Webinar appeared first on Demandbase.

Justine Davis is Head of Marketing at API platform Postman. She previously served as the Head of Marketing for Atlassian’s Agile and DevOps suite of products. With over 9 years of experience working with DevOps teams and tools, Justine is passionate about solving the needs of customers. Outside of work Justine is a mom, avid reader, and loves to close the move goal rings in sunny Scottsdale, AZ on her Apple Watch.

Connect with Justine Davis

Key takeaways

• Conduct a listening tour to understand team dynamics, customer needs, and current successes to shape a data-driven strategy.
• Align with sales, product, and data teams by addressing their priorities and showing how the strategy supports shared goals.
• Transition to server-side tracking for accurate attribution and compliance with evolving privacy regulations like GDPR.
• Hire experienced professionals for new functions to quickly establish processes and build team capability.
• Focus on professional domain sign-ups for PLG and pipeline velocity for enterprise strategies to track success.
• Foster curiosity and cross-functional collaboration to drive innovation and align teams with shared objectives.

Quotes

“Trust is built by aligning our goals with those of sales, product, and data teams, fostering a collaborative environment where strategies support shared objectives.”

Highlights from this episode

How do you approach building and evaluating go-to-market (GTM) strategies?

Justine emphasized starting every GTM strategy with a listening tour. This involves speaking with stakeholders across the company—sales, product, engineering, and customers—to understand what’s working and what needs improvement. Using this data, she evaluates the current strategy’s effectiveness and determines if a refresh or complete overhaul is required. For her, alignment between where the company is today and where it wants to go is key, supported by actionable insights and a roadmap for execution.

What methods do you use to secure buy-in across sales, product, and marketing teams?

Justine highlighted the importance of building trust through collaboration. She stressed the need to understand each team’s goals and challenges before presenting marketing initiatives. By demonstrating how the strategy aligns with and supports their objectives, she ensures buy-in. For instance, marketers need to speak the product team’s language when proposing changes or working on shared projects, using data and customer insights to back their requests.

How are you adapting to changes in marketing attribution, especially with evolving privacy regulations?

Marketing is transitioning away from third-party cookies due to privacy regulations like GDPR. Justine explained her approach of implementing server-side tracking, which anonymizes user data to ensure compliance while maintaining accurate attribution. She discussed building internal systems that integrate with platforms like Google Ads, enabling Postman to track user behavior without relying on client-side tracking methods that are becoming obsolete.

What leadership principles guide you in building and scaling marketing teams?

Justine focuses on hiring experienced individuals to establish new functions, ensuring they can hit the ground running. She values curiosity and self-awareness in her team members, believing that these traits lead to innovation and adaptability. Her leadership style is empathetic, recognizing that employees are humans first, and she actively creates environments where they feel supported and empowered to excel.

Which marketing metrics do you prioritize for product-led growth and enterprise strategies?

For product-led growth, Justine prioritizes metrics such as professional domain sign-ups and the growth of paid monthly active users. For enterprise strategies, she focuses on pipeline velocity and the percentage of opportunities touched by marketing. These metrics ensure alignment with company goals while providing clear indicators of success for both customer acquisition and expansion efforts.

What tools and trends are essential for modern marketers to stay competitive?

Justine highlighted tools like SparkToro for audience insights and Looker for analytics, which help marketers better understand their customers and optimize campaigns. She also mentioned using ABM tools, social listening platforms, and server-side tracking solutions to stay ahead of industry trends. Staying competitive requires not just adopting new tools but also understanding evolving customer behaviors and privacy standards.

What skills do you believe are crucial for future marketing professionals?

Justine believes curiosity and adaptability are essential traits for future marketers. She encourages a collaborative mindset, where professionals work across teams to align strategies and overcome challenges. Additionally, understanding data, embracing change, and being open to learning new technologies is critical for thriving in an industry that is constantly evolving.

Resource recommendations

Podcasts:

• All-In Podcast: A resource for staying updated on general tech trends.macroeconomic trends, industry developments, and insights into the future of AI.
• Lenny’s Podcast: A go-to for practical and actionable advice on product management, growth, and startups.
• Remarkable Marketing Podcast: Focused on effective marketing strategies and trends.
• Prof G Podcast: A great choice for insights into tech, marketing, and business strategies

Shout-outs

• Robert Chatwani, President at DocuSign: Justine admires his people-first leadership approach and how he treats employees as humans first, which has inspired her own leadership style.
• Archana Agarwal, President at Intercom: Justine appreciates Archana’s balanced approach of being both technically adept and a strong female leader who can hold her own in male-dominated spaces.
• Jay Simons – General Partner at Bond, currently in the VC space: Justine values Jay’s extensive industry experience and his ability to provide a broad, insightful perspective on the changes and trends happening in the B2B space.

The post Crafting a Winning GTM Strategy from the Ground Up appeared first on Demandbase.

Elizabeth Hague is a seasoned marketing executive with 15 years of experience scaling brands and driving revenue growth. She has shaped a $2.3B valuation brand, scaled two companies to acquisition, and advised over 115 businesses. Recognized as one of Georgia’s “Most Remarkable Women” for her mentorship of female entrepreneurs, Elizabeth specializes in aligning brand, demand, and product strategies for pre-IPO companies. With a focus on customer obsession and measurable impact, she empowers teams to deliver full-funnel marketing success and long-term growth.

Connect with Elizabeth

Key takeaways

• Brand as a Revenue Driver: Elizabeth emphasizes that brand building is critical for responsible growth and long-term success, bridging the gap between customer trust and measurable revenue outcomes.
• Unified Marketing Approach: Breaking down silos between brand, demand, and product teams is essential for a cohesive strategy that drives category leadership and sustainable growth.
• Customer Obsession Wins: A customer-first approach fuels brand trust, repeat business, and long-term revenue, making customer success a key component of marketing strategies.
• A brand is Measurable: Contrary to popular belief, brand initiatives can and should be tied to measurable outcomes, such as pipeline influence, customer retention, and category leadership metrics.
• Leadership in Uncertainty: In tough economic times, aligning brand strategy with revenue goals helps companies navigate challenges and emerge stronger.
• Leveraging AI in Marketing: Elizabeth advocates for using AI to enhance efficiency, from streamlining content creation to personalizing customer experiences, while keeping a human touch.
• Advocating for Brand Investment: To address skepticism from boards or CFOs, marketers must connect brand strategy to tangible business outcomes, such as improved onboarding, NPS scores, and trust-building initiatives.
• Adapting Across B2B and B2C: Drawing from her experience in both spaces, Elizabeth underscores the importance of tailoring brand strategies to industry-specific needs while focusing on customer value.

Quotes

On Brand and Revenue Alignment:
“Brand isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s a strategic asset that, when aligned with revenue goals, drives sustainable growth.”

On Customer-Centric Strategies:
“Putting the customer at the heart of your brand strategy transforms them into advocates, fueling long-term success.”

Highlights from this episode

Is brand building the key to responsible growth in today’s market?

Brand building is essential for creating a sustainable and scalable business model. A strong brand not only establishes trust but also works in harmony with demand and product strategies to deliver long-term value. Companies that focus solely on short-term demand generation often miss out on the deeper, lasting benefits that a strong brand can bring. For responsible growth, especially in today’s market, aligning brand initiatives with a unified revenue model and customer obsession is key. Brand efforts create the foundation for customer loyalty and advocacy, which drive repeat business and steady growth.

How can companies measure the impact of brand initiatives?

The idea that a brand is immeasurable is outdated. Companies can measure brand impact through several metrics, such as customer retention rates, Net Promoter Scores (NPS), and category leadership standings (e.g., Gartner quadrants, Forrester Wave). Top-of-funnel indicators like share of voice and bottom-of-funnel metrics like sales conversion also demonstrate brand value. Additionally, analyzing the influence of brand efforts on pipeline growth, account expansion, and customer satisfaction provides concrete data. Marketers must connect the dots between brand-building activities and tangible business outcomes to prove ROI to stakeholders.

What’s the role of a brand in navigating economic challenges?

A strong brand serves as a stabilizing force during times of uncertainty. In challenging economic climates, companies with a trusted and recognizable brand can retain customers, differentiate themselves from competitors, and maintain market share. When growth at all costs isn’t feasible, focusing on brand trust and customer-centric strategies helps businesses protect and expand their revenue base. Companies that invest in brand resilience during downturns position themselves to bounce back stronger when the market recovers.

How do you address skepticism about brand investment from CFOs or boards?

To overcome skepticism, marketers need to present brand initiatives as revenue-driving investments, not just costs. This involves showcasing metrics like improved onboarding experiences, higher NPS scores, and increased customer lifetime value as outcomes of brand strategies. Connecting brand activities to measurable revenue impact, such as pipeline influence and deal velocity, makes the case stronger. For budget-constrained organizations, marketers can propose phased brand investments tied to specific, short-term business goals to demonstrate quick wins and build trust for larger initiatives.

What’s the secret to navigating both B2B and B2C marketing landscapes?

Understanding your audience and tailoring your approach is crucial. B2C brands often excel at customer engagement and creating emotional connections, which B2B companies can learn from. However, the strategies must align with the business context—B2B requires a focus on customer education, trust-building, and aligning with the buyer’s journey. Successful navigation of both landscapes involves balancing creativity with strategic business thinking. Always start with the end goal and craft your marketing efforts to meet the unique needs of the audience, whether it’s a consumer or a corporate buyer.

What’s the biggest challenge in B2B marketing today?

Silos is the biggest challenge in marketing today. Departments like brand, demand, and product marketing often operate in isolation, leading to misaligned strategies and missed opportunities. This fragmentation extends beyond marketing into the broader organization, with sales, marketing, and customer success teams failing to share data or collaborate effectively. To address this, leaders must prioritize integration, create shared goals, and build frameworks that enable cross-functional collaboration. A unified approach ensures that all teams contribute to a cohesive customer journey and aligned revenue outcomes.

How should marketers break down silos between departments?

Breaking down silos starts with unifying teams under shared revenue goals. Marketing, sales, product, and customer success teams should align their strategies and maintain open lines of communication. This can involve cross-departmental meetings, shared KPIs, and collaborative planning sessions. When these teams work together, they create a seamless customer journey that improves the overall experience and drives long-term success. Additionally, fostering a culture of transparency and encouraging marketers to engage in areas like customer success or sales helps bridge gaps and align efforts.

What are your favorite AI use cases in marketing?

AI can significantly enhance efficiency in both small and large teams. For smaller teams, AI tools can streamline content creation, refine messaging, and automate repetitive tasks like reporting. For larger organizations, AI enables personalized customer experiences, such as tailoring email campaigns or optimizing product recommendations. Elizabeth highlighted creating custom GPT models that match brand voice and tone as a game-changer for content production. However, she stressed the importance of keeping a human touch, especially in roles like SDRs, where personal connections drive conversions.

Resource recommendations

Books

• “Stealing the Corner Office“: A practical and concise book providing insights on navigating workplace politics and leadership.
  
• “Revenue Architecture”: Elizabeth mentioned this new book, focusing on the bow-tie revenue model and aligning revenue leaders across marketing and sales.

Tech recommendations

• Superhuman: A tool for email management that helps achieve “inbox zero” efficiently, reducing stress and improving productivity.
  
• Zapier: A workflow automation tool that integrates apps and automates repetitive tasks.

Shout-outs

• Jane Serra– Elizabeth described Jane as a “shining beacon of positivity” who does a great job rounding up helpful posts that people may have missed each Friday.

The post Why Brand is Your Biggest Revenue Driver? appeared first on Demandbase.

Peter Bregman is a seasoned professional with over 15 years of experience propelling organizational growth across diverse sectors. Peter has expertly navigated complex business landscapes, assisting various companies, from startups to Fortune 150s, in both B2B and B2C markets. His approach emphasizes collaboration and building strong alliances across Marketing, Sales, Product, and Tech teams to ensure success. Committed to delivering actionable strategies, Peter empowers businesses to drive substantial growth through strategic innovation.

Connect with Peter Bregman

Key takeaways

• The traditional “marketing qualified lead” (MQL) metric is flawed and doesn’t accurately reflect the relationship between marketing and sales. Marketers should focus on “marketing qualified accounts” (MQAs) instead.
• Aligning marketing, sales, service, and product teams around a shared go-to-market strategy and customer-centric approach is crucial for successful B2B growth.
  
• AI can be a valuable tool in marketing, but it should be used to empower sales teams, not replace them. The key is finding specific use cases and having enough data to train the AI models effectively.

Quotes

“Quality Matters way more than quantity, prospects have to be at the right place in their buying cycle, the ideal customer profile has to match, and generating a whole bunch of leads is really just resulting in bad conversion metrics, distrust between marketing and sales.” -Peter Bregman

Highlights from this episode

What is the problem with marketing qualified leads (MQLs) as a metric, and how should organizations think about replacing it?

According to Peter Bregman, the main problem with marketing qualified leads (MQLs) as a metric is that it is based on the outdated idea that marketing and sales are completely separate, with marketing’s sole purpose being to generate leads for sales to close. Bregman argues that this leads to a focus on quantity over quality, poor conversion rates, and distrust between marketing and sales.

To replace MQLs, Peter suggests that organizations should focus on “marketing qualified accounts” (MQAs) or move towards a revenue operations approach that aligns marketing, sales, service, and product teams around a shared go-to-market strategy and customer-centric approach. The key is to identify the ideal customer profile, understand the customer journey, and work collaboratively to educate and nurture prospects rather than just generate leads. Metrics should focus on engagement, intent, and how well prospects match the ideal customer profile, rather than just lead volume.

How can AI be used effectively in B2B marketing, and what are the key considerations?

According to Peter Bregman, AI can be used effectively in B2B marketing, but the key is to use it to empower and assist human teams, not replace them. Some of the key considerations he mentions include:

• AI works best when there is a specific use case or problem to solve, rather than just using AI for the sake of using it.
• Organizations need to have enough high-quality data to properly train the AI models for them to be effective.
• AI can be used to provide sales development representatives (SDRs) with valuable insights and intelligence to make them more effective, rather than trying to replace SDRs with virtual AI agents.
• The customer experience should always be the top priority when using AI, ensuring that it enhances the experience rather than detracting from it.

Overall, he emphasizes that AI should be used as a tool to complement and empower human teams, not as a replacement for them and that organizations need to have a clear strategy and sufficient data to use AI effectively in their B2B marketing efforts.

Should sales development representatives (SDRs) report to marketing instead of sales, and what are the pros and cons of that approach?

According to Peter Bregman, whether SDRs should report to marketing or sales depends on the size and structure of the organization:

Pros of SDRs reporting to marketing:

• In smaller organizations, it can work well to align the outreach teams (SDRs) with marketing, especially for prospects in the awareness and research stages.
• This can help ensure tight alignment between marketing and inside sales teams.

Cons of SDRs reporting to marketing:

• In larger organizations, it can be more challenging to maintain alignment between the SDRs reporting to marketing and the field sales teams.
• There needs to be careful consideration of how the SDRs are compensated and organized to ensure they are still effectively working with the sales teams.

Overall, Bregman emphasizes that the most important thing is to ensure there is tight alignment between marketing and sales teams, regardless of the reporting structure. Regular meetings and a shared go-to-market strategy are key, even if the SDRs don’t report directly to marketing.

Resource recommendations

Books

– “Invisible Rulers” by Renee de Resta – A fascinating look at how influence and ideas spread on the internet and the creation of “bespoke realities” on social media.

Podcasts

– “Planet Money” – An entertaining economics podcast

– “Hard Fork” – A podcast covering the state of technology

– “In Depth” from First Round Capital – Interviews with founders of companies they’ve invested in

Shout-outs

– Tiffany Gonzalez – Runs revenue operations at Microsoft and has been writing insightful content about complex sales and marketing issues, as well as metrics.

– Charlie Liang – Previously the head of marketing at Engagio (acquired by Demandbase), and now VP at Kula. He writes a lot of great content on go-to-market strategy, engagement, martech, and outbound sales.

– Abby Kelsey – Specializes in helping B2B companies with social selling, particularly on LinkedIn, which is becoming an increasingly important platform for B2B sales.

The post Why MQL is a Terrible Metric? appeared first on Demandbase.

Mana Ionescu is a digital marketing leader and Head of Digital Marketing at Axos Bank in San Diego. A former agency founder, Mana loves to demystify complex marketing concepts and debunk digital marketing myths. She teaches at the Kellogg Professional Certificate in Digital Marketing and is a sought-after keynote. In her free time, Mana likes to explore the peaks and valleys of our beautiful earth: hiking and SCUBA diving.

Connect with Mana Ionescu

Key takeaways

• Implement ethical and unbiased AI practices through diverse data, regular audits, and transparency
• Ask fundamental questions about AI models, like how they avoid overfitting, to validate outputs
• Maintain visibility into the “why” behind AI recommendations, especially for high-stakes decisions
• Embrace AI’s potential to create new opportunities in marketing by enabling more data-driven, scientific practices
• Recommend that marketers learn about machine learning concepts to become more proficient

Quotes

“We can’t have a black box. You need to be able to explain to stakeholders how the AI models work and the risks involved.” -Mana Ionescu

Highlights from this episode

How do we balance AI’s speed and accuracy benefits while ensuring ethical and unbiased decision-making?

According to Mana Ionescu, there are a few key practices to balance the speed and accuracy benefits of AI while ensuring ethical and unbiased decision-making:

• Diverse data sets: Ensure the data used to train AI models is wide, diverse, and representative of all demographics to minimize bias.
• Regular audits: Implement a governance framework with regular audits to check the models for accuracy, fairness, and alignment with ethical standards.
• Transparency: Work closely with data scientists to understand and be able to explain how the AI models work, what went into them, and how they are making decisions.
• Human oversight: Establish governance teams to provide human oversight and ensure the AI models are operating within ethical guidelines.

By implementing these practices, organizations can harness the speed and accuracy benefits of AI while mitigating the risks of unethical or biased decision-making.

What fundamental questions should marketers ask to validate the outputs and assumptions of AI or predictive models?

According to Mana Ionescu, some key fundamental questions marketers should ask to validate the outputs and assumptions of AI or predictive models include:

• “How do you address overfitting?” Overfitting is a common issue where the model learns too closely to the training data and performs poorly on new data. Understanding how the model avoids overfitting is crucial.
• “Where does the data come from? Do you have enough data? Is it reliable and representative?” Ensuring the data used to train the model is high-quality and diverse is essential for accurate outputs.
• “How are you going to measure the model’s performance, bias, and fairness?” Marketers should understand the metrics and validation methods used to assess the model’s accuracy and fairness.
• “How does the model perform under different scenarios? Can you stress test it with edge cases?” Evaluating the model’s robustness and ability to handle a variety of situations is important.

How does the size and diversity of the data impact the reliability of AI model outputs?

According to Mana Ionescu, the size and diversity of the data used to train AI models has a significant impact on the reliability of the model outputs:

• Data size: Larger, more comprehensive data sets allow the model to learn patterns and make more accurate predictions. Smaller data sets can lead to overfitting and poor performance on new data.
• Data diversity: Diverse data that represents a wide range of scenarios, demographics, and edge cases helps the model learn more generalized patterns. This reduces bias and improves the model’s ability to make reliable predictions across different situations.

Mana explains that data scientists use multiple models and statistical methods to test the reliability of the outputs, as the model is built upon a series of algorithms and data inputs. Ensuring the data is high-quality, representative, and comprehensive is crucial for developing reliable AI models.

In what situations is it necessary for marketers to see the “why” behind AI recommendations, and why is this important?

According to Mana Ionescu, marketers must have visibility into the “why” behind AI recommendations in the following situations:

• High-stakes decisions: For decisions that have a significant impact, such as loan approvals or medical diagnoses, it’s crucial to understand the reasoning behind the AI’s recommendations to ensure they are accurate and unbiased.
• Compliance and regulatory requirements: In industries like finance and healthcare, regulations mandate that AI models used for certain decisions are transparent and their decision-making process is explainable.
• Bias detection and mitigation: Understanding the “why” behind AI recommendations allows marketers to identify and address any potential biases in the model.
• Building trust with stakeholders: Providing transparency into how the AI is making decisions helps build trust with internal teams, executives, and customers who are relying on those recommendations.
• Improving the model: Visibility into the “why” enables marketers to better understand the model’s strengths and weaknesses, allowing them to refine and improve it over time.

What are some of the practices or regulations that exist in different industries like financial services to ensure fair and non-discriminatory use of AI?

Mana mentioned several key practices and regulations in place to ensure the fair and non-discriminatory use of AI in industries like financial services:

• In financial services, regulations like the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act require that AI models used for lending and credit decisions are fair and non-discriminatory.
• The healthcare industry has regulations like HIPAA that mandate the fair use of AI in medical decisions.
• General practices include:
  • Algorithmic accountability – ensuring transparency and understanding of how AI models make decisions
  • Bias mitigation – implementing controls to identify and address biases in the data and models
  • Ethics and governance frameworks – establishing guidelines and oversight to ensure ethical AI practices

  These regulations and practices are crucial to avoid the risks of biased or discriminatory AI-powered decisions, especially in high-stakes scenarios.

Shout-outs

–Jill Rowley, GTM Advisor & LP at Stage 2 Capital

–Jon Miller, Former CMO at Demandbase and Co-founder at Marketo and Engagio

–Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder and CMO at Orbit Media

The post Balancing AI and Human Judgement in Decision Making appeared first on Demandbase.

Jill Canada currently serves as the Vice President of Commercial at Mendaera Inc., a Silicon Valley-based healthcare technology company developing a platform that combines robotics, real-time imaging, artificial intelligence, and connectivity. Before Mendaera, Jill served as the Vice President of Corporate and Enterprise Sales and as a key member of the Executive team at Avail Medsystems where she led a dynamic team dedicated to supporting some of the healthcare sector’s largest and most influential entities.

Connect with Jill Canada

Key takeaways

• Creating new markets takes longer and more money than expected, especially in healthcare with its regulatory complexities
• Finding the right product-market fit and beachhead is critical for startups
• Building a diverse, multidisciplinary team with empowerment and a culture of experimentation is important for disruptive technology
• Change management is essential but often overlooked, especially in communicating with and guiding clients through workflow changes  
• Experience from both startups and large companies is valuable; leadership qualities like accountability translate between environments
• Aligning with investors and boards that understand your sector and market creation is important for startup success

Quotes

“Sometimes, success is defined by what you say no to as much as what you say yes to” 

-Jill Canada

Highlights from this episode

Can you speak to the challenges you faced in creating new markets, especially in healthcare?

Jill discussed several challenges of creating new markets, especially in healthcare. She emphasized that healthcare has a complex regulatory environment where early decisions have long-lasting impacts. More broadly, creating a new market is an expensive, time-consuming process that invariably requires more resources than initially planned. Additional challenges include defining the market category and naming, as well as finding the right initial product-market fit or “beachhead.” Jill also noted the importance of focus, as the temptation exists to try to serve too many audiences, when resources are best spent saying no to non-essentials in the early stages of market creation.

How do you think about building teams to implement disruptive technology knowing you have to knock it out of the park with every hire?

Jill emphasized the importance of building a strategic and thoughtful team to implement disruptive technology. She stressed the need for diversity in experiences and skills, as well as fostering collaboration and empowerment. Having representation from various disciplines like healthcare, technology, data analytics, and commercialization is critical. An environment where experimentation is accepted and failure can lead to learning is also important. Hiring the right people is key, but empowering them and creating a culture of continuous learning from successes and failures is equally important for innovation according to Jill.

What are some of the lessons you’ve learned in change management throughout your career?

Some of the key lessons Jill discussed learning about change management throughout her career include:

– Communication is fundamental, both to build initial awareness and buy-in from stakeholders.

– Resistance and barriers to change are natural and should be expected, as the status quo is difficult to change.

– Training and support are critical aspects that change management often relies on. They need to be planned for in advance.

– Progress must be monitored and the approach adapted based on feedback and results.

– Change management is not “extra credit” – it is essential, especially for new markets and disruptive technologies, to successfully guide clients through workflow changes.

What are some comparisons you would make between experiences at startups vs large organizations like GE and Roche?

While Jill found significant value in the extensive resources, training, and business lessons gained from large organizations like GE and Roche, she also appreciates certain aspects of working at startups. She noted there are more similarities between the two environments than often acknowledged. At a high level, leadership skills around accountability, vision-setting, and managing people are equally transferable. However, startups provide the benefit of direct accountability where the results of actions are immediately visible, as well as camaraderie in rapidly executing ideas from concept to market. At the same time, Jill recognized large companies teach important lessons around accountability that serve her well at startups. Overall, Jill sees the experiences as complementary rather than different, with valuable takeaways to be applied regardless of company size.

What are some takeaways or advice you would give to those trying to disrupt an existing market with new technology?

Jill emphasized the importance of having backing from investors who truly understand the sector being disrupted and have experience guiding companies through the market creation process. It’s also critical to align business objectives with investors who can provide strategic counsel. Additionally, teams should acknowledge that disrupting a market will invariably take more resources than planned. Finally, Jill stressed focusing heavily on change management from the start to help clients transition workflows successfully. This includes understanding that some level of resistance is natural and ensuring communication, training, and support are in place to guide the change process.

Resource recommendations

Podcasts

–DeviceTalks Podcast Network (MedtechWOMEN Talks, DeviceTalks Weekly)

–Fast Five Medtech News

–Huberman Lab

–WorkLife with Adam Grant

Shout-outs

–Heidi Seerden, President, GE Healthcare

–Holly Scott, VP and Partner, The Mullings Group

–Daniel Hawkins, CEO, Vista.ai

The post Pioneering Markets with Disruptive Tech appeared first on Demandbase.

Carol is the CMO at Exclaimer, an email signature software platform. She is a senior leader backed by over 15 years in the digital and technology space for established businesses and start-ups. Coming from a background in product marketing, brand development, and demand generation. Carol is hugely passionate about building strategy, storytelling, bringing products to life for consumers, and driving growth.

From building the first intelligent customer journeys at a global hotel brand to scaling the business marketing function from zero to hero for a Skyscanner, managing global demand for a leading pre-IPO software giant, Carol has a proven track record in engaging with the business, developing key stakeholder relationships, managing budgets and leading teams to realize their potential.

Connect with Carol Howley

Key takeaways

• Prioritize customer experiences and align business processes to meet customer needs
• Cross-departmental alignment is key to achieving customer-centric growth
• Balance investments in brand awareness and demand generation for business growth
• Measure brand awareness impact through metrics like NPS, engagement, sentiment
• Personalization, AI, ABM, and video are areas of focus for future marketing strategy
• Building trust through the brand is important for long-term visibility and sales opportunities

Quotes

“How do we focus on what’s in the market, tailor our message to those particular verticals, or those types of or groups of people, and start to be really intelligent about where we spend our money? Because if we did spend on every possible industry vertical and company size would be very, very poor very quickly.

-Carol Howley

Highlights from this episode

Could you share how you initially got interested in marketing as a profession and what attracted you to your current role?

Carol shared that she’s always been fascinated by the psychology behind marketing and why people buy things. In university, her dissertation focused on the use of persuasion and tactics within marketing. This sparked her interest in wanting to understand how these techniques can and should be used. She enjoyed the blend of creativity, strategy, and data-driven decision-making that marketing offers. In her current role as CMO, she’s responsible for the overall growth of the business and gets involved in every stage of the customer journey, as well as employer branding and internal/external communications. This variety of responsibilities within marketing is very appealing to her.

What were some of the key challenges you experienced in transitioning to a more customer-centric approach? How have you been able to overcome these?

Some of the key challenges Carol experienced in transitioning to a more customer-centric approach included:

• Making customer experience a core business belief that the whole company buys into, requires a significant cultural shift.
• Breaking down silos between departments as customers don’t care which team handles their needs.
• Prioritizing technical changes to better support customers over legacy systems.

To overcome these challenges, Carol emphasized the importance of aligning processes, systems, and mindsets and collaborating across departments. She also highlighted measuring customer sentiment through NPS scores and feedback to continually improve the experience. Launching an advisory board provided valuable insights directly from customers on how the company can better serve their needs.

How are you able to balance investing in brand awareness while also driving demand through your marketing funnel?

Carol explained that she aims to invest 60% of her budget and team’s time/focus on demand generation activities like content creation that create and capture demand by targeting specific personas and pain points. The remaining 30-40% goes towards brand awareness efforts to bring new potential customers into the top of the funnel for the future. This balanced approach allows them to operate in the current market while also building long-term brand recognition. She emphasized the importance of both brand and demand generation investments for business growth, especially as buyers do more research before engaging with brands.

From your perspective, what metrics are you finding most useful in measuring the impact of your brand-building efforts?

Carol shared that she looks at a “brand impact score” that incorporates various metrics:

• Brand awareness metrics like share of voice and social channel traffic/engagement 
• Sentiment analysis of what people say about the brand online and in reviews
• NPS scores from customers and those who interact with the company
• Web traffic and engagement with digital content
• Employee satisfaction ratings as employees represent the brand
• Trends in these metrics to see the impact of campaigns and make improvements

She finds tracking metrics across awareness, engagement, sentiment, and business results provides a holistic view of how brand-building efforts are translating to the bottom line over the long term.

Looking ahead, what are you most excited about in terms of expanding or improving your marketing strategy?

Carol shared a few areas she’s most excited about expanding in their marketing strategy:

• Leveraging AI through tools like Jasper to scale operations while maintaining a human touch, such as generating content in her voice.  
• Advancing their ABM efforts and personalizing the customer experience through tools that can pre-populate webpages.
• Disseminating video content more effectively using their in-house video editing capabilities.

How do you plan to continue nurturing your customer relationships at scale?

Carol plans to continue nurturing customer relationships at scale by taking personalization further such as building web pages customers land on that are pre-populated with their specific brand and experience. She also aims to bring customers more into the journey by featuring them and their stories to help others understand how Exclaimer solves similar problems. This personalized approach across the customer experience will help nurture relationships at a larger scale.

Resource recommendations

Books

–Radical Candor for learning about effective communication within teams.

–No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls for insights into how the buyer’s world is changing.

Blogs

–The Account-Based Revolution: From Origins to AI-Driven Futures by Jon Miller.

Newsletters

–The Reeder

–MKT1

Podcasts

–Marketing Against The Grain

–Exit Five- B2B Marketing with Dave Gerhardt

–The Diary Of A CEO

Shout-outs

–Alina Vandenberghe, Co-founder & Co-CEO at Chili Piper

–Cathy McPhillips, Chief Growth Officer at Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute

–Trinity Nguyen, VP of Marketing at UserGems

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