Latané Conant, CMO at 6sense, joined us for a Demand Gen Live Expert Series yesterday to talk about the dark funnel and how to use intent as a trigger for outbound as a means of getting off the MQL hamster wheel.
Chris Walker and Megan Bowen hosted another Demand Gen Live community event this week. They covered three pre-set agenda topics: (1) The Demand Waterfall: Is it time for a new demand model?; (2) The 6 pillars to build your word of mouth strategy; (3) The big problem companies face when only focusing on capturing demand. Chris also opened the stage to a live Q&A and answered questions from the community in regards to quality vs. quantity of leads, content distribution and promotion, creating ...
Chris Walker joined Norwest Venture Partners for an event called “The New Rules of Digital Advertising.” He shared insights on the gap between leads and revenue, measuring on pipeline and revenue instead of solely on leads, and why measurement and attribution needs to shift in this new era of marketing. He also talked about reverse engineering how marketing got to where it is today and followed up his keynote with a brief Q&A.
Chris Walker presented another keynote last week and shared his demand generation framework. Main takeaways: Word of mouth drives most B2B buying decisions today The best way to connect with your buyers is through content that resonates with them Attribution isn't always what it seems Content distribution is just as, if not more important, than creation The same team should be responsible for both brand AND demand He also answered questions in regards to his demand gen framework, inbound vs. out...
Chris Walker hosted Demand Gen Live last night with MJ Peters as his co-host. They covered pipeline velocity and how to start incorporating that into your primary marketing metrics, the missing piece of product marketing, and building a community vs. building a following. Chris also answered questions about whether or not brand and demand should be separate functions in an organization, leveraging expertise and gaining trust amongst your audience, and limitations with direct attribution by chann...
Christopher Lochhead, Author of Play Bigger and Host of the Lochhead On Marketing Podcast, joined Chris for an episode of State of Demand Gen. They shared insights on category design, what makes a legendary marketer, and why marketing is just sales at scale. Lochhead shared his thoughts and examples on why categories make brands as well as how to understand if a company really gets marketing. Disclaimer: This episode contains explicit language.
Chris Walker hosted a European time zone-friendly episode of Demand Gen Live yesterday where he delivered a keynote on the Dark Funnel. He explained what the Dark Funnel is and what marketers can do to capture the attention of their buyers in the places and ways in which they ACTUALLY buy. He opened up the stage to a live Q&A after the keynote and answered questions about non-conversion-based paid social, whether or not you can measure the impact of marketing in the dark funnel, intent data,...
Chris Walker hosted this week's Demand Gen Live from his new Boston podcast studio. The agenda consisted of: Why Marketing Teams Should Move to a Holistic Website-Sourced Funnel, Crash course: Revenue Ops for Marketers, and How to Measure the Impact of Brand. He answered questions from the audience in regards to freeing your marketing team from attribution, the dark funnel, pipeline marketing vs. creating demand, the purpose of landing pages, using brand and word of mouth to get in front of your...
Tom Wentworth, CMO at Recorded Future, joined Chris for a podcast episode last week. They discussed what happens when marketers make the shift from optimizing for leads to optimizing for pipeline, and Tom shared that getting more leads is not always good for the business. Chris and Tom talked through opportunity costs, the long term implications of optimizing for short-term metrics, the importance of brand in hitting pipeline goals, and why having a loyal audience creates a competitive advantage...
Chris Walker and Megan Bowen of Refine Labs hosted another Demand Gen Live last night. The agenda consisted of: Performance Marketing vs. Brand Marketing, Why You Don't *Need* SEO in 2021, and How Top Marketers Stay Ahead of the Curve. They also answered live questions about ungating content, adjusting your metrics and how that affects things downstream, the iOS 15 update, prioritization based on perceived or measurable impact, and creating content. Curious how you can win in the dark funnel and...
Chris Walker, CEO at Refine Labs, hosted another small business consulting session where he narrowed in on a company's biggest opportunity to double down their efforts in what he calls the "white space." This is where there's a lot of organic reach and competitors are not executing properly. He also shared his take on their Google Search strategy and how he'd recommend taking their positioning to the next level.
Chris Walker went live yesterday with Dave Gerhardt, CMO at Privy, to have a discussion around the topic of how to prioritize your career path as a marketer. They talked through why it isn't necessary to be an expert at every function within marketing, but to have an understanding of what good looks like in all those functions as well as a broader understanding of how marketing interacts with other departments throughout an organization. Chris and Dave took questions live as they related to work...
Last night on Demand Gen Live, Chris and Megan covered the following topics: The truth about influencer marketing that executives need to recognize Relationship building is at the core of B2B influencer marketing The value of user-generated content Great marketing means sales isn’t needed in the same capacity What types of content drive the most engagement Leveraging trade shows in an unconventional manner Sales enablement content Ad consumption - is there a negative impact if no action is taken...
Christine Leonard, Director of Marketing Optimization at Amplify, came onto State of Demand Gen for an episode of Back to Basics about marketing optimization and the buyer experience. They touched on how to avoid a leaky funnel by making sure in ICP buyers are being handled appropriately, and how a phenomenal buyer experience can be a differentiator. Chris and Christine went back and forth on why marketers should be shadowing their sales teams so they understand what happens when a lead is passe...
Kathleen Booth, VP of Marketing at clean.io, joined Chris on State of Demand Gen to talk about authenticity in marketing. They discussed how to build leadership's confidence when it comes to experimentation and testing, why a "checking the box" approach to content is a huge missed opportunity, and the nuances between subscription and membership models. Kathleen and Chris shared their thoughts on outdated marketing strategies and how to freshen them up, and why brand marketing for a large corpora...
Gaetano DiNardi (Director of Growth Marketing @ Nextiva) made a surprise appearance on Demand Gen Live with Chris Walker last night. They covered... What The Dark Funnel Is and How Marketers Can Use it to Market Better Issues with Intent Data Marketing Momentum The Importance of Consistency Creating a top 25 marketing podcast Leaning into what you can't measure Compounding gains Distribution strategies for hard to reach audiences Targeted direct mail When to outsource expertise Getting the most ...
Nick Bennett (Director of Account-Based & Field Marketing @ Alyce) brought Chris onto his Field Marketing Meetup to talk about the biggest upcoming opportunities in the field marketing space. They broke down the definition of field marketing and how field marketing tactics move across into demand and product marketing. It's important to note that what field marketing is defined as in one organization could be completely different than what it may be in another, but is oftentimes the bridge b...
Chris joined Mark Stouse on the Accelerating Value podcast to talk about the differences between B2C and B2B, specifically in regards to what B2B companies should unlearn from B2C marketing strategies. They talked about disrupting the “agency” world and why if a marketing agency can’t market themselves that should be a red flag. Chris also shared why churn is a business problem, not a customer success problem, and what the leading causes of churn are and how to correct them.
Chris and Megan hosted a special episode of Demand Gen Live last night with the primary focus being career growth and entrepreneurship. Chris kicked off the episode sharing his unconventional career path and how he ended up founding Refine Labs. They followed up with a Q&A where they covered an assortment of topics including: Intent signals How do you keep your strategy moving or know when it’s time to move on As a marketer your job is to keep moving with your customer Following your intuiti...
Chris hosted a consulting call with a one-person marketing team with no budget at a small business. He shared his insights on the best approaches to take, given the inputs, to answer the following question: "If we have certain brands we want to target, what would be the best marketing approach to begin to attract that potential business via our digital marketing channels?"
Chris Walker and Megan Bowen hosted a 1.5 hour-long installment of Demand Gen Live last night. They covered: The business rationale behind why marketing-sourced revenue is a better metric than marketing-influenced revenue Reaching new audiences through podcasting Setting a content strategy with an external SME Striking a balance between providing true value and entertaining in your content strategy How content can be repurposed for different use cases and mediums The power of partnering with oth...
Erik MacKinnon hosted this episode of Back to Basics with Chris with the main topic being content creation and distribution. They discussed how an earlier stage company, younger marketer, or a company just running SEO as their content play could go about shifting their focus to creating impactful content. Erik and Chris talked about organizational alignment and why marketers need to focus as much, if not more, on distribution. Throughout the episode, Chris answered the following questions: What ...
Chris Walker kicked off the first event of our recurring series with Dave Gerhardt, CMO at Privy, on the 6th of May and spent an hour covering a handful of different topics. They talked about whether marketing is an art or science (or both), having a pulse on your market, why building brand and creating demand builds businesses, and the impact of positioning your company as the expert in your niche and how that makes selling your product or service easier. Dave also went into detail on company s...
Chris Walker and Megan Bowen hosted another installment Demand Gen Live last night and covered the following topics: Why having customers that are happy is the most important thing in a business How to create content that works across the entire journey Thinking about things through a long term lens We are in the word-of mouth marketing era The hidden benefits of thought leadership and personal branding Brand Demand and ABM: Which to start with and how to implement each in your organization How ...
Sidney Waterfall hosted this episode of Back to Basics with Chris Walker with the main focus of attribution in the B2B SaaS space. While there are common pitfalls associated with the over-reliance on attribution, it's not always so black and white. It's not that you shouldn't use it, just that you should understand when it should and should not be used. It's about balancing the things that you can and can't measure. Just because you can measure it doesn't mean it works and vice versa. We'd love ...
On last night's episode of Demand Gen Live, Chris Walker and Megan Bowen covered the following topics: Why marketers who create the most demand are the most in-demand; Pros and cons of category creation on SEO; A clearly defined playbook for creating demand; The value of SMEs creating content; How inefficiencies break as you scale; Intent data vs. actual intent; Marketing to different segments; Does SaaS marketing transfer to other industries; and Not blindly following advice....
Mark Roberge, Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital and former CRO at Hubspot, joined Chris on State of Demand Gen last week. They broke down common challenges with scaling B2B businesses, and Mark shared the top 5 reasons why SaaS businesses struggle with scaling. He shared why customer retention should be of heavier focus, and how to establish a leading metric for customer behavior since retention takes awhile to measure. He also explained what the three avenues of growth are and how they can b...
Chris joined Hannah Munro on the CFO 4.0 Podcast to talk about how the role of marketing has shifted. He shared insights in regards to : better defining what a lead is, brand as a feeling, how the buying process has changed drastically over the past several years, why some of the most effective marketing strategies can't be measured, and how investing appropriately in marketing will drive business faster than an overinflated sales team. Register here for our recurring series with Dave Gerhardt, ...
On last night's episode of Demand Gen Live, Chris and Megan covered the following topics: Lead gen vs. Demand gen: how metrics and timing define your strategy Brand recognition Being realistic in regards to results Determining what makes most sense for your business to prioritize TODAY, not 10 years ago The curve of the adoption of innovation Insourcing vs. Outsourcing The importance of owning your CRM, your data, your tech stack, and your ad accounts internally Differences between LinkedIn pers...
This episode was repurposed from when Chris joined Dave Gerhardt (CMO at Privy) for a conversation on the B2B Marketing Leaders podcast. They talked about unconventional growth levers, problem solving as a marketer, the importance of being in the details, and why a strong team makes everything easier. Chris dove into why measurement is flawed in marketing and how to use correlation and social cues as a means of measurement, and Dave shared that one thing marketers are not good at doing is thinki...
