Revenue Rehab: June Recap 2022

Perfecting the Customer Experience: Addressing the Changing Buyer Journey

In this episode, Brandi Starr is joined by Yushau Sodiq. Yushau shares key insights into how and why we should shift from the linear imagery of the traditional marketing ‘funnel’. “It’s not a funnel, it’s a figure eight” he emphasizes. Yushau also explains how an infinity loop is important to clearly illustrate and inform the customer experience.

Brandi and Yushau address the buyer journey and the importance of acknowledging and personalizing the customer experience. Through understanding the buyer journey, you can give customers more of what they are looking for.

Another essential element to excelling with your customer experience is by leveraging data! Yushau also emphasizes how leveraging data is key to excelling in your customer experience. Next, Yushau and Brandi discuss the critical importance of Digital Web Data. He recommends making the most of what you already have at your fingertips, such as Google Analytics, your CRM, SEM Rush, social media data, and more.

Yushau also recommends building an ecosystem via interactive events and initiatives such as ‘lunch and learns’, that include all four revenue-touching teams (customer, product, sales, marketing). This will help you to understand the buyer journey in greater detail.

Customer Advocacy: The Key to Winning at NetNew and Retention

Brandi Starr was joined by Adrian Chang, Senior Director, Field & Customer Marketing at Mindtickle.

In this episode, Adrian discusses the importance of customer advocacy; the necessity of putting the customer first, and allowing the end customer and their experience to guide marketing – particularly within the context of B2B environments.

Adrian believes that the customer’s experience comes first, and customer marketing professionals need to concentrate on the customer’s desired end objective. As he puts it, advocacy it’s not just about giving, it’s not just about delighting the customer, it’s about thoroughly understanding the customer’s personal objectives.

Adrian emphasizes how the customer advocacy journey’s position in your org chart will depend on the nature of your organization. For example, if you have entrusted your customer team to own the customer experience end-to-end, it should live there. However, if the intent of marketing is well known and understood, and your organization has the ability to drive the full lifecycle, it can live in marketing. Regardless of your customer advocacy’s positioning, clarifying roles is crucial to ensuring success.

Adrian also emphasizes the importance of measuring customer advocacy. The trick? Track your customer interactions; meetings, campaign engagements, and all your micro-moments. By doing so, you will eventually accumulate enough data to solidify patterns and identify key customer behaviors.

According to Adrian, ‘The One Thing You Can Do Today’ is to make sure everyone in your organization has literacy on what it takes to create a customer and create an advocate.

Demand Generation: What’s Working, What’s Not and the Role Messaging Plays

Jamie Walker, SVP of Global Marketing at Keyfactor joins Brandi to discuss focusing beyond the numbers, Brand vs. Demand Generation and how to get the most out of your campaigns.

They start talking about brand vs demand campaigns; how they are closely intertwined and layered, and why Marketers should take advantage of this overlap.

Jamie shares her (semi-controversial) opinion about Chatbots; if your company isn’t evaluating any tool you’re using, including Chatbots, it’s impossible to know if it is delivering value for cost.

Brandi and Jamie talk about Account-based experience (ABX) and Brand Awareness. While acknowledging there’s variances at each company, Jamie shares how at Keyfactor they’ve established that by layering traditional events, digital experiences, and syndication, using both lead-based and account-based tactics, they’ve been able to maximize their success.

The one thing marketers can do today is add a layer of brand awareness onto their demand generation campaign themes, says Jamie. Decide and identify what you’re trying to measure and carve out some of your budget to execute. She emphasizes that CMOs should make sure they have the tools to measure the campaign success as without this, it will be difficult to show the return on investment, for any funds allocated towards brand awareness.

Finding Your Circle: The Importance of Community for Personal Growth

In ‘Finding Your Circle’, we are joined by two experts to discuss The Importance of Community for Personal Growth. Who better to discuss this topic than Matt Heinz of CMO Coffee Talk and Mike Rizzo, the Community-led Founder of MO Pros?

Brandi, Matt, and Mike discuss the hows and whys of Community for CMOs and marketers, and the importance of Finding Your Circle.

Our guests reveal the difference between necessity and intention, and the value of nurturing a conversation amongst peers.

Brandi, Matt, and Mike share the importance of finding your peer set and how valuable peer communities are, whether they are industry focused, such as the Mo Pros, or personally focused, similar to the CMO Coffee Talk.

Matt and Mike reveal the reason behind their success with their communities; building Brand Created Communities.

Key takeaways:
Matt notes the importance of being intentional: “Be intentional about finding one or two circles that represent you”. Call a meeting with your team and ask the question, “Where do you want to go in your career?”. Ask yourself first, then reach out to the community to find out how to make it happen.
Mike recommends doing one thing today: be vulnerable which will lead you to strength and excellence in leadership.

Service-Market Fit: Mastering Market Fit Isn’t Just for Product Orgs

In this episode, Brandi is joined by Emily Maxie, CMO at Very, to discuss Service-Market Fit. Emily and Brandi talk about the difference between Product-Market fit vs. Service-Market Fit.

Emily explains how complex Product-Market Fit is, as it touches so many departments, while Service-Market Fit is less physically tangible but even more complex, due to the wide variables and depth of focus required.

Another important topic Emily and Brandi hit on during the episode is TAM (total addressable market). “Decide on a hypothesis and prove yourself wrong” Emily advises. “We are so susceptible to confirmation bias”, Emily says. Brandi and Emily discuss how creating a strong team facilitates future planning and focus. When your team comes with experience and are leaders in their area, they are able to produce buy-in and execute, thereby giving a CMO the opportunity to plan for the future and be a guiding leader within the organization. Hire smart and hire skill, says Emily.

Emily’s key takeaway is a book recommendation. She suggests listeners read Crossing the Chasm; “An amazing book about bringing a product to market. It’s a game changer.”