Exit Five: B2B Marketing with Dave Gerhardt

Chad Knipschild is a Navy Veteran and now Senior Product Marketing Manager at Recorded Future. Dave and Chad talk about his background and learnings from his time in the Navy to getting a job in tech and working in product marketing, plus a handful of topics outside of marketing for a little change of pace.Send guest pitches and ideas to hello@exitfive.comExit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exitfiveco***Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.This episode is brought to you by Zapier. Zapier empowers anyone to automate their work across 5,000+ apps, so that every person and business can move forward at growth speed. We power over 2.2 million businesses, from startups to Fortune 100, and we’ve been doing it for over a decade. Learn more + get started for free at zapier.comThanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast. Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest. Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Dave is joined by Hillary Carpio, Head of ABM at Snowflake for a deep dive on account-based marketing. Hillary runs a 20 person team focused on ABM at Snowflake today.They discuss why Snowflake has been an "account-based organization", ABM vs. Demand Generation, how to measure ABM, what an effective ABM campaign looks like, creating a tiered ABM strategy, how marketing exists to support sales at Snowflake and why it works, how tools like ChatGPT and Jasper can help ABM marketers, and more.You can also checkout Hillary's "GTM Speed Dial" podcast if you want more of her knowledge on the regular.Send guest pitches and ideas to hello@exitfive.comExit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exitfiveco***Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.This episode is brought to you by Zapier. Zapier empowers anyone to automate their work across 5,000+ apps, so that every person and business can move forward at growth speed. We power over 2.2 million businesses, from startups to Fortune 100, and we’ve been doing it for over a decade. Learn more + get started for free at zapier.comThanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast. Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest. Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Dave is joined by Adam Schoenfeld (CEO at Keyplay.io) and Camille Trent (Director of Content & Community at Peersignal.org). They talk about community building for B2B SaaS, what it means to "build a media company", and how creating the Peer Signal community eventually led to building a new SaaS company called Keyplay.io, the "return to rigor" and other observations from the current landscape in B2B sales & marketing and more. Prior to KeyPlay Adam was co-founder & CEO at Siftrock (acquired by Drift) and VP Strategy at Drift.Send guest pitches and ideas to hello@exitfive.comExit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exitfiveco***Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.This episode is brought to you by Zapier. Zapier empowers anyone to automate their work across 5,000+ apps, so that every person and business can move forward at growth speed. We power over 2.2 million businesses, from startups to Fortune 100, and we’ve been doing it for over a decade. Learn more + get started for free at zapier.comThanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast. Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest. Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Dave is interviewed by Superside VP Marketing Amrita Mathur during a live session focused on positioning and company storytelling. When it comes to driving revenue we obsess over tactics when so often the root cause is actually positioning. When sales and marketing efforts are stuck or slowing down, it's rarely because you need to unlock a new channel, or because you are not using the latest martech tool. It is most often a positioning problem. But it is much easier to toss the blame on sales + marketing efforts and ask those teams to do more - because positioning is a whole company issue. Changing the product roadmap, ideal customer profile, pricing/packaging, and how you talk about what you do -- well shoot that is a ton of work, and there's a lot of feelings and opinions, and there's this team who we already committed to doing X for, and investing Y in this, and it goes on for ever. But it's most often positioning that needs to be changed because the context for your market/customers has changed. And the solution is not buying intent data from a new vendor, doing new field events, or hammering on outbound. Those things wont work without the right company story + positioning. With the reality of budget cuts, less headcount, and mounting pressure to hit targets right now there is no better time to take a hard look at positioning. Strong positioning is knowing the value you deliver that no other product on the market can for your ideal customer. Best of all, you can make these improvements without additional budget or new hires (there's something that will make the CFO happy). If you want to brush up positioning and find 1-2 new ideas to help your business, I think you'll get a lot from this episode.Send guest pitches and ideas to hello@exitfive.comExit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exitfiveco***Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.This episode is brought to you by Jasper. Jasper is the AI Content Generator that helps you and your team break through creative blocks to create amazing, original content 10X faster. Learn more + start using AI to create content for free at jasper.aiThanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast. Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest. Visit hatch.fm to learn more

This episode is from an Exit Five live session we did with Dave Gerhardt, Betsy Koliba, and Mitch Briggs from Demandwell. Every few weeks we like to bring on subject matter experts to do Exit Five Live sessions about topics that are more tactical than the typical CMO interview. This was an hour long AMA on all things SEO, focused on what B2B marketers need to know about SEO in 2023, including some questions about how new trends like generative AI, ChatGPT, and short form video will impact SEO in the future, and the classics like: does the blog still matter? which pages on your website should you be pushing people to rank? and more.This episode will serve as a great crash course (or refresher) on what matters in SEO and how you can use organic search to drive meaningful results for your business.Send guest pitches and ideas to hello@exitfive.comExit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exitfiveco***Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.This episode is brought to you by Jasper. Jasper is the AI Content Generator that helps you and your team break through creative blocks to create amazing, original content 10X faster. Learn more + start using AI to create content for free at jasper.aiThanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast. Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest. Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Dave is joined by Obaid Durrani and Todd Clouser for a discussion about content and community for B2B SaaS. Obaid and Todd met while working together at Refine Labs and co-host the "Cheat Codes" podcast for B2B SaaS marketers. They help marketing leaders and creators craft their narrative, implement new processes, and refine their content engine to reflect their product, narrative, and objectives.  Send guest pitches and ideas to hello@exitfive.comExit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exitfiveco***Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.This episode is brought to you by Jasper. Jasper is the AI Content Generator that helps you and your team break through creative blocks to create amazing, original content 10X faster. Learn more + start using AI to create content for free at jasper.aiThanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast. Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest. Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Amrita Mathur is VP Marketing at Superside. Superside is a B2B SaaS company that provides a design subscription service for marketing and creative teams. We talk about how Superside went from $0 to $30M ARR in three years, marketing strategy, when to exploit vs. when to explore, marketing team structure, where to find efficiencies in marketing, how constraints can act as foundations for your entire go-to-market effort, the cost of missing out, making smarter marketing bets and more.Send guest pitches and ideas to hello@exitfive.comExit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exitfiveco***Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.This episode is brought to you by Jasper. Jasper is the AI Content Generator that helps you and your team break through creative blocks to create amazing, original content 10X faster. Learn more + start using AI to create content for free at jasper.aiThanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast. Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest. Visit hatch.fm to learn more 00:00.58dgmgAh, will you tell me your name and tell me what you had for breakfast today.00:04.48AmritaOh my gosh. This is how you start on your podcast I had a little bit of Chi and that's it. That's I'm not a breakfast person to be honest.00:16.73dgmgI go back and forth sometimes I am and then sometimes I think it is nice to kind of let it ride until 11 or or 12 I don't but but then sometimes I wake up and I'm like hungry and I gotta eat right now.00:27.85AmritaYeah, no I get it the whole intermittent fasting thing. You know people are talking about it these days like a lot and I'm just like but I've literally been doing that my whole life like I just don't eat until like noon or one that's just how.00:41.35dgmgYeah, it's it's funny how that happens like a trend happens and then people are like wait. This is a trend I've just been doing this thing my my whole life I did I I did it more just like out of convenience like ah like ah I just found when I was living in Boston and like going into the office and.00:46.54AmritaYes.00:58.10dgmgProcess of just like having to get breakfast every morning and I think a lot of there's a lot of like health nutritional advice that' like you got to eat breakfast. You got to eat breakfast. But I think you can get the same amount of meals and just later in the day and then you don't have it. It is a little bit freeing and I have your whole schedule be structured around like I got to eat or I'm going to pass out right now.01:13.36AmritaYeah, yeah, and then and the newest is that not only do you got to eat breakfast but you have to get thirty grams of protein just just sizable. That's like a burger patty kind of right I think thirty grams and it's like I don't think I can eat that you know if I can have half a banana that's pretty good.01:21.41dgmgUm, right? yeah.01:31.60dgmgYeah, right, We're not all ah like Hollywood celebrities with with private chefs. You know it's like you got to have you got to have convenience. Okay, so see no what happens is when you ask somebody that then you you start in a normal conversation and it's.01:36.62AmritaUm, I think we doubt yeah.01:43.76AmritaYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.01:46.56dgmgI Know you'd be a good guess anyway though because I've heard you I've heard you talk before. So um, let's just start with just tell people your name and background so they can get context for your for your voice and maybe describe what you what you do at superside and and and what superside is.01:59.56AmritaYeah, for sure. So my name is am Rita Mather I work for a company called superside which is very cool like innovative and disruptive in some ways you know we're tackling an age-old problem which is how the heck do you get good creative done good design done and. The answer is that there's many many different ways and there's many different models and constructs for for doing that and our approach has been to say hey you could be an Amazon you could be a meta you could be a ubs or a Morgan Stanley or whatever and maybe you have this huge gigantic, super powerful internal team.02:24.64dgmgSo.02:38.56AmritaThat can crank out this amazing stuff. Maybe you use a bit of AiEtc but there's still going to be times where you need added capacity and maybe that is a permanent state that you live in because your marketing team and your go-to-market teams are actually always ahead of the curve. And they're always pushing the boundaries. So it's kind of impossible for the creative team to like fully catch up so you're always going to be in this like state of flux where you're just like holy shit I need more and I need better and I need faster right? and it's like think about how we even do like Facebook ads these days like you need like 57 versions of the same thing to properly test it and. You need that in two days and then by the way the experiment data just came back and now you need to change your whole approach and that whole cycle the the test and learn cycle. That's so part. A big part of marketing now is complicated and design and creative teams just need to find a way to like catch up. So that's that's ultimately the.03:22.64dgmgEarth.03:30.90dgmgYeah, well, it's interesting. It's it's like um, you you run this for a while in my job at drift I I ran the creative team and that was like I had no idea what I was doing and ah while I was good at the creative part like.03:31.91AmritaOf.03:36.58AmritaThanks.03:44.41AmritaUm.03:44.74dgmgIt was fun to come up with the ideas and come up with campaigns but you know I I noticed really quickly that you kind of keep bumping into the same problem which is like the answer is always yes we can do that. But that means we got to take this other thing off, it's such a game of.. It's very similar to like engineering and like prioritizing different things and it's hard and I ended up building so much empathy for the creatives at drift For example, on that on that team because you know they don't often know the needs of the business or like who which internal you know.04:02.90AmritaYeah.04:19.95dgmgRelationship between this vp and that vp is like why you need to actually prioritize this page There's just so much nuance and like what's going on and they're like look I just want to create stuff so but but I can't because there's a limited number of hours in the day and so you always it always you bump up against a resource thing and always comes down to do we hire somebody. Internally do we hire somebody externally pros and cons to each approach right? because sometimes you just like I need this I need we need this support now. We need this magically now. It's like I need this work now and in either case to find a good freelancer or to hire someone you got to train them onboard and there just there's a lot that it takes and so I think um.04:39.43AmritaYeah, yeah.04:46.33AmritaYeah, yeah, yeah.04:58.76dgmgYou know, separate from even like the product right? and you working there I Just think as a marketing org challenge. This is something that a lot of people that listen to this podcast like are probably nodding their heads to and struggle with.05:07.57AmritaYeah, hundred percent and you know what there's so much more nuance right? like it's I think it's so easy for everybody to dumb everything down to like lack of process. You know like if you if you normally bring up stuff like this no matter what the team is what the department is. Like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you just need a good process and like then you can do it and it's like really some things can't be solved by a good process sometimes you actually need multiple machines working together. Um in in unison and like different machines actually tackle different parts of it I actually have a really good example. Someone gave me insight into how Amazon operates. I mean they're just a case study for so many amazing things. But this in particular. So what they've done is in subsubsidiaries. They've split up the creative team into 3 buckets and there's like 1 team that's purely experimental like all they do is run experiments like that's it they don't do anything else. They don't do anything else.05:50.17dgmgUm.06:03.58AmritaThen there's like a core team and then there's a swat team. The swat team is basically like akin to the core team but they jump on urgent items. So all they do is like tackle like urgent like it's like really no credence to like what's actually strategic and important. But it's just like just tackling the urgent shit and it's always like somewhat execution focused.06:20.69dgmgYeah.06:22.80AmritaAnd I love that model I love that they know that there's these 3 different problem spaces and they're going to have 3 different capacities almost figured out to tackle that because like 1 team can't possibly think about all of those things.06:34.19dgmgI thought I thought that the the team that only handles urgent shit is just called the marketing team startup. Oh my gosh. Yeah, like everything is urgent. But yeah, no I think I think that's great I think even just what you like that Amazon.06:42.12AmritaUm, in startup land. Yeah you and me were there were yeah right? That's that's ah.06:53.87dgmgAh, kind of team structure makes me think of also just interesting ways to structure marketing orgs like it. It is so hard you have this traditional structure of like you have demand gen and product marketing and then content. But then you're trying to do things on a campaign basis and I've always. 1 of my frustrations like that I learned over time inside of a company was how many people need to be involved and and so one of the reasons that I went and worked on the creative team was

Dave talks about building an audience on LinkedIn and whether or not LinkedIn followers are a "vanity metric" or not. Send guest pitches and ideas to hello@exitfive.comExit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exitfiveco***Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.This episode is brought to you by Jasper. Jasper is the AI Content Generator that helps you and your team break through creative blocks to create amazing, original content 10X faster. Learn more + start using AI to create content for free at jasper.aiThanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast. Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest. Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Meghan Anderson is VP of Marketing at Jasper. Jasper is an AI Content Platform that helps creators break through writer's block, create original illustrations, and adapt content for different formats, languages and tone. Meghan leads a talented team of marketers overseeing all of acquisition, customer marketing, field and product marketing, community, brand and creative. Prior to Jasper, Meghan served as CMO at the Wanderlust group and was VP of Marketing at HubSpot for nearly a decade.In this episode Meghan and Dave talk about:- How an accidental phone call led to her joining Jasper - What's going on at Jasper today- Innovative ways she's seeing marketing teams use Jasper- The difference between ChatGPT and Jasper- Building her team and the marketing team structure at Jasper- How company strategy impacts marketing team structure- And more; this was a fun conversation :)***Send guest pitches and ideas to hello@exitfive.comExit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exitfiveco***Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.This episode is brought to you by Jasper. Jasper is the AI Content Generator that helps you and your team break through creative blocks to create amazing, original content 10X faster. Learn more + start using AI to create content for free at jasper.aiThanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast. Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest. Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Dave is joined by Jimmy Daly (co-founder and CEO of Superpath). Jimmy is the former VP of Growth at Animalz (content marketing agency) who went out on his own to start the ultimate resource for content marketers like him: one place that covers strategy, management, writing, career development and more. This episode will be interesting to B2B content marketers and anyone that's ever had the thought "hey, I could start my own business out of this."- Send guest pitches and ideas to hello@exitfive.com- Exit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/- Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exitfivecoThanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.This episode is brought to you by Demandwell. Demandwell is the best SEO solution for B2B SaaS marketers. They’ve helped customers like Lessonly drive 40% of their revenue from organic search. And they helped Terminus’s make organic search their number one source of demosHere’s how it works: Results: Demandwell is built for driving the outcomes that b2b marketers care about - demand, traffic, leads, and revenue.  Ease and control: Junior team members can follow recommended steps in the platform, while experts can customize and maintain full control over their work.  Speed: With everything in one platform, Demandwell helps you crank out content that ranks and drives leads in minutes rather than hours.  SEO expert or not, you should give Demandwell a try, and listeners of the Exit Five podcast can get a free competitive SEO Audit to see how you’re ranking relative to your competitors. Go to demandwell.com/fomo to get your free SEO consultation today.Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast. Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest. Visit hatch.fm to learn more

This episode is from a fireside chat Dave did with Bill Macaitis, former CMO at Slack and Zendesk during G2's 2023 "Reach" event on how to build a brand in an economic downturn. We cover what is a brand, what is brand marketing, 8 ways to fit a brand into a marketing strategy,  creating a brand centric product, and examples from Bill's work over the years. - Send guest pitches and ideas to hello@exitfive.com- Exit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/- Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exitfivecoThanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.This episode is brought to you by Demandwell. Demandwell is the best SEO solution for B2B SaaS marketers. They’ve helped customers like Lessonly drive 40% of their revenue from organic search. And they helped Terminus’s make organic search their number one source of demosHere’s how it works: Results: Demandwell is built for driving the outcomes that b2b marketers care about - demand, traffic, leads, and revenue.  Ease and control: Junior team members can follow recommended steps in the platform, while experts can customize and maintain full control over their work.  Speed: With everything in one platform, Demandwell helps you crank out content that ranks and drives leads in minutes rather than hours.  SEO expert or not, you should give Demandwell a try, and listeners of the Exit Five podcast can get a free competitive SEO Audit to see how you’re ranking relative to your competitors. Go to demandwell.com/fomo to get your free SEO consultation today.Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast. Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest. Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Just Dave on this short solo episode talking about how making a bet on a tool or technology can change the trajectory of your career and why it pays to be an early adopter.- Send guest pitches and ideas to hello@exitfive.com- Exit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/- Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exitfivecoThanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.This episode is brought to you by Demandwell. Demandwell is the best SEO solution for B2B SaaS marketers. They’ve helped customers like Lessonly drive 40% of their revenue from organic search. And they helped Terminus’s make organic search their number one source of demosHere’s how it works: Results: Demandwell is built for driving the outcomes that b2b marketers care about - demand, traffic, leads, and revenue.  Ease and control: Junior team members can follow recommended steps in the platform, while experts can customize and maintain full control over their work.  Speed: With everything in one platform, Demandwell helps you crank out content that ranks and drives leads in minutes rather than hours.  SEO expert or not, you should give Demandwell a try, and listeners of the Exit Five podcast can get a free competitive SEO Audit to see how you’re ranking relative to your competitors. Go to demandwell.com/fomo to get your free SEO consultation today.Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast. Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest. Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Just Dave on this short solo episode talking about constraints & guardrails.If you want to make better marketing decisions and struggle with a blank slate, listen to this. Make constraints. Put in a guardrails. Sometimes you will have plenty already in place, like budget, deadlines, or what's technically possible. But even without obvious constraints like those, you can force yourself to have some to help guide the decision making process. Guardrails can help move you from being stuck on making decisions because of the infinite possibilities of channels and campaigns. This is also why so often the answer to many marketing strategy questions here are "it depends" or "tell me more about X."Thanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.This episode is brought to you by Demandwell. Demandwell is the best SEO solution for B2B SaaS marketers. They’ve helped customers like Lessonly drive 40% of their revenue from organic search. And they helped Terminus’s make organic search their number one source of demosHere’s how it works: Results: Demandwell is built for driving the outcomes that b2b marketers care about - demand, traffic, leads, and revenue.  Ease and control: Junior team members can follow recommended steps in the platform, while experts can customize and maintain full control over their work.  Speed: With everything in one platform, Demandwell helps you crank out content that ranks and drives leads in minutes rather than hours.  SEO expert or not, you should give Demandwell a try, and listeners of the Exit Five podcast can get a free competitive SEO Audit to see how you’re ranking relative to your competitors. Go to demandwell.com/fomo to get your free SEO consultation today.Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast. Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest. Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Dave is joined by Brandon Redlinger (VP Marketing at Crosschq). Prior to leading marketing at Crosschq, Brandon was Head of Demand Gen at Demandbase where he managed demand generation, ABM, content marketing, field marketing and partner marketing teams, and Head of Growth at Engagio where he led all content, website, corporate communications and digital marketing.By popular demand in the Exit Five community we wanted to do a dedicated episode on account-based marketing and cover all things ABM in this hour with Brandon, including: - Why take an ABM approach to marketing, which type of companies this go-to-market strategy makes sense for- Where to start with ABM- Guidance for working with sales on selecting target accounts, who owns the account selection process, where ops fits in between sales and marketing, and what "aligning" with sales actually looks like strategically and tactically- What elements are part of an effective ABM campaign and examples of successful ABM campaigns- Metrics and measurement- And more- Send guest pitches and ideas to hello@exitfive.com- Exit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/- Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exitfivecoThanks to our 2023 presenting sponsors Demandwell, Jasper, and Zapier.This episode is brought to you by Demandwell. Demandwell is the best SEO solution for B2B SaaS marketers. They’ve helped customers like Lessonly drive 40% of their revenue from organic search. And they helped Terminus’s make organic search their number one source of demosHere’s how it works: Results: Demandwell is built for driving the outcomes that b2b marketers care about - demand, traffic, leads, and revenue.  Ease and control: Junior team members can follow recommended steps in the platform, while experts can customize and maintain full control over their work.  Speed: With everything in one platform, Demandwell helps you crank out content that ranks and drives leads in minutes rather than hours.  SEO expert or not, you should give Demandwell a try, and listeners of the Exit Five podcast can get a free competitive SEO Audit to see how you’re ranking relative to your competitors. Go to demandwell.com/fomo to get your free SEO consultation today.Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast. Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest. Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Dave is joined by John Short (Founder & CEO of Compound Growth Marketing) to talk about the state of B2B marketing / B2B SaaS as a of December 2022 heading into the new year, tips for growing your career during a time when company growth might be slower, and why they are continuing to bet on LinkedIn organic as a key channel for B2B company growth.Thanks to Demandwell, our presenting sponsor for the Exit Five podcast.https://www.demandwell.com/Demandwell is the best SEO solution for B2B SaaS marketers. They’ve helped customers like Lessonly drive 40% of their revenue from organic search. And they helped Terminus’s make organic search their number one source of demosHere’s how it works: Results: Demandwell is built for driving the outcomes that b2b marketers care about - demand, traffic, leads, and revenue.  Ease and control: Junior team members can follow recommended steps in the platform, while experts can customize and maintain full control over their work.  Speed: With everything in one platform, Demandwell helps you crank out content that ranks and drives leads in minutes rather than hours.  SEO expert or not, you should give Demandwell a try, and listeners of the Exit Five podcast can get a free competitive SEO Audit to see how you’re ranking relative to your competitorsGo to demandwell.com/fomo to get your free SEO consultation today.Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing the podcast for me. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.

Dave is joined by his wife Lya in a rare guest appearance. This is a very special episode of the Exit Five podcast - it's a one episode revival of the podcast Dave and Lya did a few years ago called "What Parents Talk About" and Lya takes the mic to grill Dave on a few questions about solopreneurship, parenting, telling the truth on LinkedIn, the mental load, golf vs. work, being home together everyday and more.Thanks to Demandwell, our presenting sponsor for the Exit Five podcast.https://www.demandwell.com/Demandwell is the best SEO solution for B2B SaaS marketers. They’ve helped customers like Lessonly drive 40% of their revenue from organic search. And they helped Terminus’s make organic search their number one source of demosHere’s how it works: Results: Demandwell is built for driving the outcomes that b2b marketers care about - demand, traffic, leads, and revenue.  Ease and control: Junior team members can follow recommended steps in the platform, while experts can customize and maintain full control over their work.  Speed: With everything in one platform, Demandwell helps you crank out content that ranks and drives leads in minutes rather than hours.  SEO expert or not, you should give Demandwell a try, and listeners of the Exit Five podcast can get a free competitive SEO Audit to see how you’re ranking relative to your competitorsGo to demandwell.com/fomo to get your free SEO consultation today.Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing the podcast for me. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.

Dave is joined by one of his best friends from high school Tim McKone for a little change of pace podcast episode we are calling Outside of Work. Dave and Tim talk about getting into running, training for the Boston Marathon, why running makes a great hobby, falling back in love with sports, Dave's love for golf, how Tim got into his career in sports media and working at 98.5 The Sports Hub, the top local sports radio station in the country and more. You can find Tim on Twitter @Tim_McKone. Connect with Dave on Instagram @davegerhardt1. Should I do more of these types of episodes? Send me a message on Instagram - @davegerhardt1 or an email to questions@davegerhardt.comThanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing the podcast for me. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.

Eyal Webber-Zvik is VP of Product Marketing at Cato Networks. Cato is a company in the networking and security space current over $100M in annual revenue. In his role, Eyal manages a global team of product marketing directors that are tasked driving the company's messaging, position, press and media relations, and more. Previously, Eyal ran Cato's product management organization and he has more than 20 years of experience in engineering, product management and product marketing. Dave and Eyal talk about the role of product marketing in global organization that is driven by field sales, creating the company narrative and sales deck, and more.Thanks to Demandwell, our presenting sponsor for the Exit Five podcast.https://www.demandwell.com/Demandwell is the best SEO solution for B2B SaaS marketers. They’ve helped customers like Lessonly drive 40% of their revenue from organic search. And they helped Terminus’s make organic search their number one source of demosHere’s how it works: Results: Demandwell is built for driving the outcomes that b2b marketers care about - demand, traffic, leads, and revenue.  Ease and control: Junior team members can follow recommended steps in the platform, while experts can customize and maintain full control over their work.  Speed: With everything in one platform, Demandwell helps you crank out content that ranks and drives leads in minutes rather than hours.  SEO expert or not, you should give Demandwell a try, and listeners of the Exit Five podcast can get a free competitive SEO Audit to see how you’re ranking relative to your competitorsGo to demandwell.com/fomo to get your free SEO consultation today.Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing the podcast for me. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.

Lauren Vaccarello is Chief Marketing Officer at Salesloft. Dave and Lauren talk about how Lauren landed at Salesloft, the first six months in her new role, what to look for when evaluating marketing leadership roles, the relationship between sales and marketing, and lessons from her experiences from public company CMO to startup marketing exec to head of digital at Salesforce in the early 2010's.- Send guest pitches and ideas to hello@exitfive.com- Exit Five on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitfive/- Exit Five on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exitfivecoThanks to Demandwell, our presenting sponsor for the Exit Five podcast.https://www.demandwell.com/Demandwell is the best SEO solution for B2B SaaS marketers. They’ve helped customers like Lessonly drive 40% of their revenue from organic search. And they helped Terminus’s make organic search their number one source of demosHere’s how it works: Results: Demandwell is built for driving the outcomes that b2b marketers care about - demand, traffic, leads, and revenue.  Ease and control: Junior team members can follow recommended steps in the platform, while experts can customize and maintain full control over their work.  Speed: With everything in one platform, Demandwell helps you crank out content that ranks and drives leads in minutes rather than hours.  SEO expert or not, you should give Demandwell a try, and listeners of the Exit Five podcast can get a free competitive SEO Audit to see how you’re ranking relative to your competitorsGo to demandwell.com/fomo to get your free SEO consultation today.Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing the podcast for me. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.

Dave shares the 16 lessons he wishes he knew as a first-time marketing leader, going from marketing manager to CMO in four years. This is a recording from Metadata's DEMAND 2022 virtual event in October 2022. The lessons include: Forget the acronyms & best practices, use your brain. Ultimately there are only three ways to grow a business: get more new customers, increase the transaction value, increase how often people buy from you. You can get lost in the MQL PQL SQL SAL definitions and best practices. Get back to the basics and operate from first principles. You need a story to be successful in B2B. Call it a category, call it a movement. Regardless, you need a story that people can bring to their boss about why they should buy your product beyond features + benefits. HubSpot created inbound marketing. Gainsight championed customer success. Drift conversational marketing. Each led through education + expertise and showed people a new way of doing things. Sell the vision and the story. You need to sweat the "offer" - request a demo and contact sales are only going to convert for the highest intent prospects. You need other offers. HubSpot's website grader. Drift did a "test drive" to test the chatbot on your website before talking to anyone. Demandwell has a free SEO audit. Clari has a revenue leakage calculator. These are all smart ideas that are still further down the funnel than ebook but work to get qualified buyers in to eventually talk to sales. Avoid incremental thinking. You can waste so many cycles thinking that the next homepage variation or the email series is going to be the thing that gets you out of the revenue hole. Rarely does "nurturing" solve the problem. Take bigger swings. You must find a way to get on the same page as sales, no matter what. Find a way to put all the internal politics aside. You will never be successful unless you can marketing sales + marketing = revenue *together*. Find out how the VP of sales is comped and do everything in your power to get on the same page. Health teams gives bonuses based on company goals not team goals. Find out and fix it. Manage up to the CEO if needed. Life is 100% easier when sales + marketing have shared revenue goals. Make finance and ops your best friends. YOU HAVE PLENTY TO DO ON YOUR OWN, YOUR JOB IS NOT FINANCE AND OPS I PROMISE YOU!!!! But instead find a way to make them your key business partners. Same way you need to be on the same team as sales, you need to be on the same team with finance and ops. Make them your best friends - collaborate on marketing as a business function Don’t be like 28 year old Dave “I got this myself” - DON’T GET DEFENSIVE - take the help, work together. Show your work and master internal communication. Top complaint: I never know what marketing is doing. If you can’t get the people inside fired up, how will customers be? Top complaint: Marketing is doing a lot, but no idea how it fits our goals. You must always be sharing the bigger picture, related to company goals. Some systems I like: Slack: sharing screenshots, work in progress, teasers, etc. Weekly, monthly, quarterly recaps - here’s what marketing is up to . Take any opportunity to present to the company you can get. Create cross-functional check-ins with marketing, product, sales, CS, finance, ops, together. Marketing is the leadership department as Christopher Lochhead says. Make it that way. Lead by example. You're supposed to be the best communicators in the company right? You must be able to articulate what your marketing strategy is. Don’t get lost in the tactics - see too much of this today. It’s the job of the marketing leader to have a vision for HOW the company does marketing. ABM? Product led? Both? SMB? Mid Market? Enterprise? Be intentional about your approach. You cant take the peanut butter approach and spread average stuff everywhere and expect to win. FOCUS. But also what type of marketing, what brand do you want to be? Have a view on the market, have a view on how you’ll do marketing this year, have a POV on what good marketing looks like. Ex: at Privy we sold to small businesses so we knew they weren't marketing experts and our marketing had to speak to them and they didn't have a lot of time to figure it out, so we had to lead with simple + clear + educational content. You must be able to think short term and long term. Hitting today's goal is great, but what about when the plan jumps 50% next year? You need to be able to build the foundation for that now or you'll wish you did a year from now. Spend 70% of your time on today and 30% of your time on next year/tomorrow. Be disciplined about laying the groundwork for next year and beyond and it will payoff. What will your next channels be? Where can you get future growth from? Start testing and learning now before you need it. Then you can be ready to turn it on. Manage up to the CEO. She cares about two things: revenue and the story. Keep your communication + collaboration tight to those things. She doesnt need to know every detail about what's going on inside of your org and you shouldn't let her. Manage up and get help around revenue and the story. Focus your efforts there. You have to making hiring your job not your side project. People are everything. You know that. Every HBR article ever has said it. But candidates are not going to magically fall on your lap you must treat this like your own marketing program. It's not HR / recruiters job it's your job - no one will know who to hire better than you. Build a brand for yourself in the market. Get religious about sourcing via LinkedIn. Make it your full-time job. Even if you're not hiring you should always be meeting great marketers -- at least so you can model / know what great looks like. Keep a list of your dream team. Make a spreadsheet of names of great people you'd hire if you could one day. You never know. Create your own momentum. It's 2022. You dont need to wait for Gartner or Forrester to write about you. You dont need the product team to ship the one key feature. Marketing is ultimately about content. You can create your own momentum by thinking like a publishing company. Create regular marketing launches. We called them "marketable moments" this can be content, research, reports, events. And then hopefully yes you have product shipping regularly and can do regular product launches too. But stick to a monthly launch calendar. Make some noise every month on your own, no matter what ingredients you have from the company or product team. Set the dates in advance. Dates and deadlines drive action. At Drift we launched the first Tuesday of every month, regardless. It helped us create our own momentum and was a competitive advantage -- PLUS it was contagious and pushed the rest of the the company to ship more too, especially the product team. They wanted to keep up with us. Your job is to get the job done. Doesn't matter if your hire internally, agency, outsource, use an intern or your grandmother. As the marketing leader they are paying you to deliver the result. Put that above everything else especially your ego. That's the biggest difference between the marketing leader and the individual contributor. It's not necessarily your job to do it but its your job to get it DONE. Do the job internally first before hiring externally. Always test and prove - at least get some signal internally. “What should the role of events manager do?” - no idea, you find out. Ex: you think you want to hire a partner marketing person; great make it part of product marketing's role for a quarter to test and learn. Ex: you want to hire for PR. Great. Make it part of your job for a quarter. You’ll never know what good looks like, how to measure, etc. unless you test it first. You can do this for almost any role / any “job" - I've made many mistakes because I didnt do this first. Get comfortable making bets without perfect data. You will rarely have all of the data / perfect data. Ultimately marketing is about making bets. Attribution doesn’t tell you what to do, it’s an input, something to help guide you. Even in our “data driven world”, must be able to act + make a bet + make a gut decision. That’s the skill (and the fun) of this job  Spend the budget. Dont be afraid of it. Use it. That's what it's there for. Thanks to Demandwell, our presenting sponsor for the Exit Five podcast.https://www.demandwell.com/Demandwell is the best SEO solution for B2B SaaS marketers. They’ve helped customers like Lessonly drive 40% of their revenue from organic search. And they helped Terminus’s make organic search their number one source of demosHere’s how it works: Results: Demandwell is built for driving the outcomes that b2b marketers care about - demand, traffic, leads, and revenue.  Ease and control: Junior team members can follow recommended steps in the platform, while experts can customize and maintain full control over their work.  Speed: With everything in one platform, Demandwell helps you crank out content that ranks and drives leads in minutes rather than hours.  SEO expert or not, you should give Demandwell a try, and listeners of the Exit Five podcast can get a free competitive SEO Audit to see how you’re ranking relative to your competitorsGo to demandwell.com/fomo to get your free SEO consultation today.Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing the podcast for me. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.