Renegade Marketers Unite

Sometimes, the big ideas sort of just happen. That said, some magical brand moment isn't going to just appear without some planning or effort—but sometimes, some small bit of genuine authenticity can grow into a brand pearl. That's part of what happened with White Ops, and on this episode, Dan Lowden, CMO, discusses how. White Ops is fueled by their purpose-driven mission to disrupt the illicit economy built by cybercriminals; that mission has caught fire and stands as a sterling example of why purpose is a must. Tune in to hear about how they formed their mission, how they show it to the world, why they shun the hard sell, and how an overarching purpose came from a simple t-shirt that just read "human."

"It's not if—it's how." That's how Karen Jones, CMO of Ryder, a supply chain management and logistics company, started wrapping up our interview. It's also what she tells her team often, and an integral part of how they approach business hurdles. The key to their success, though, isn't just relishing the opportunity to overcome a challenge—they also rely heavily on a deliberate, test-heavy approach where they have room to explore, experiment, and find bold solutions that work. Another crucial element is the CEO relationship—for Karen to succeed, she noted the need for support from the CEO and board to have leeway in her marketing endeavors. In this episode, we'll hear more about how she's formed her marketing mindset through her career, and how learning from failures has helped shaped her current approach. Listen in for a candid conversation about the pitfalls of marketing in a silo, marketing's limitations within a business, and how effective marketing can accelerate a product's demise.

In this interview, host & Renegade CEO Drew Neisser actually sits down with, well, Drew Neisser. Maybe it's half interview, half monologue. Either way, on this episode, Drew explores the concept of CATS. Not the fluffy, loveable-yet-tempestuous pets, but the four key traits for being an effective marketer that are absolutely crucial in developing an effective B2B marketing strategy. Listen in to learn about being an effective, creative marketer, crafting a brand, cutting the clutter in your efforts, and much more! For the main course on How to Develop an Effective B2B Brand Strategy in 2020, please chomp on Drew's Special (17,771 word) Report http://renegade.com//b2b-brand-strategy-report/

In 2017, Jeff Perkins was champing at the bit to get started as CMO of ParkMobile, a parking assistance app based out of Atlanta. He saw the 7.5 million users, the hundreds of thousands of new users each month, and the awesome product driving everything. However, when he got going, he began to notice his enthusiasm wasn't exactly the norm. Jeff joined the team following some significant board changes, executive changes, and turnover. As a result, the company moral was experiencing a sort of slump, despite the app's early success, and the leadership decided to step up. Jeff was quick to spot that this relative malaise could be remedied with a clearer articulation of the company's vision in a clear set of core values. Following that, an emphasis on employee engagement would help that mission—and a new positive spirit—spread through the company. Listen in to this episode to hear more about how ParkMobile built a thriving culture around core values and an engaged internal team, and how that culture has helped the company grow to 17.5 million users.

One of the integral questions most marketers face is: How do I expand my audience? Well, you could draw up a new campaign, make a new product—heck, you could even bite the head off a bat; Ozzy Osbourne definitely reached quite a few new people in the 80's with that stunt. Well, maybe that last one isn't the best idea for businesses. Anyways, an important aspect is: you have to do something that works with your brand, resonates with the people who want to use your product, and is relatively product agnostic. Now, while they may not be dining on any small nocturnal mammals, Twilio's marketing efforts certainly capture the aforementioned guidelines, and take on a spirit of boldness and experimentation, all in the service of expanding their audience. In this episode, Sara Varni, CMO of the cloud comms company, discusses how they've created marketing that they know their users will like and respond to. It ranges from gamified tutorials, to dev conferences, to sponsored hackathons at client offices and so much more. To learn more about these efforts, and the scrappy, startup-mentality that drives them, tune into this week's episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite.

As a veteran of Silicon Valley with tenures at multiple massive, industry-leading tech companies, Carl Tsukahara has developed a serious taste for adventurous testing, especially in B2B. That doesn't mean just running around pushing buttons and selecting metrics at random, it means breaking free from the common snare of planning multiple meetings and emails before adjusting a small facet of the landing page for A/B testing. Speaking of A/B testing, Tsukahara's career path has led him to currently serve as Chief Marketing Officer of Optimizely, which is essentially the home of the A/B test. They also call themselves "the world's leading experimentation platform," painting the company as a fitting place for a bold marketer and tester like Tsukahara. In this interview, Carl discusses what different companies ought to be testing for, how to properly set up certain guardrails to guide your testing, what we can learn from big brands like Amazon and Netflix, and much, much more. Check it out!

When Matrixx started out in 2008, they were a David among Goliaths. People thought they were crazy to even try cracking a pretty crowded SaaS market for communications and digital services provider. Skip ahead a few years and they're boasting 70% growth (for 3+ years!), 15% responsibility for the lead pipeline—which in a niche market like Matrixx's is quite a feat—and, perhaps most impressive of all, a 100% renewal rate for the multi-year subscription model. You don't see 100% all that often (Citizen Kane's 100% on Rotten Tomatoes is certainly good company to share), and with good reason: it takes some simply stunning work from the company to achieve. In this episode, Jennifer Kyriakakis, Founder & VP of Marketing, talks about their journey from startup to top-5 brand in their industry. She shares how they've celebrated customer loyalty (hint: don't make your case studies about your product), how to boldly approach new business acquisition, how they manage to show each prospect a live demonstration of how the Matrixx software can support their specific needs, and more. Matrixx has maintained a David mentality, even as they've grown to the Goliath level, listen in to this episode of RTU to learn how.

Ask most senior marketing executives to describe their company, and you'll often hear words like "workflow," "optimization," or "disruption" get thrown around. When you ask Dave Brotton, Vice President of Marketing, about Purple Wave, you'll get something a little different—they like to say they "sell big, dirty, greasy equipment." Now that's a description with character. Purple Wave is, in fact, is in the business of big, dirty, greasy equipment—they are an online auction platform focused on things like construction and agricultural vehicles. So, think of it as eBay, but instead of a cute, $30 vintage sweater, you're bidding on a $43,000 2012 John Deere S660 RWA combine to help harvest your next corn or soybean crop. Believe it or not, marketing a company geared towards industrial agricultural equipment is a little different than marketing a company where you can sell your sibling's old sweaters for some pocket cash. Purple Wave has devoted significant time to ensuring proper persona slicing for their efforts and have committed to building a strong community that can help them draw in both buyers and sellers. On this episode, Dave and Drew meet in Tampa at The CMO Club Summit in their escapes from Manhattan, KS and Manhattan, NY, respectively. They talk about company growth, community forming for customers and prospects, meaningful customer relationships, and more. Check it out!

What happens when you put an incredibly articulate CMO in a cab with the host of Renegade Thinkers Unite? Genuine fast-paced goodness, that's what! Jennifer Renaud, CMO of Vertiv, a $4.5 Billion company that spun out of Emerson Power in late 2016, is absolutely riveting as she shares the stories of two large companies that abandoned well-known brand names with frightful results. The first company in question was Oracle. During her time there, Renaud witnessed the disappearance of both the Eloqua and Responsys brands in favor of the new Oracle Marketing Cloud. The initial results were not pretty as thousands of Eloqua and Responsys lovers searched in vain for those brands. Site traffic dropped off dramatically until they returned to using the old names at least on landing page. Amazingly, the same thing happened at Vertiv, the parent company of brands like Liebert, Avocent and Geist. While none of these are household names, it turns out they are well liked in their vertical markets. Shortly after her arrival at Vertiv in April 2018, Renaud visited a customer who had not heard of her new company, but when she shared the name of the other brands, he said proudly, "oh great, do you want to see my Liebert?" It was at the moment that Renaud realized that bringing back the Liebert name, at least online, as well as the others, could have a dramatic impact on their business. She was right! If you're thinking about abandoning a brand name, then do listen in both to understand the risks and to hear ways of mitigating the downside. And for anyone who wants to make a case for growing brand awareness, you'll find it especially interesting to hear what happens when that awareness is suddenly taken away. Fascinating insights await you. Enjoy.

There is probably nothing more fundamental to marketing than your brand name. It usually takes years to build awareness and equity, especially the kind of equity that helps recruit employees, retain customers and attract prospects. So, when a company decides to change its name, that's a really big deal or at least it should be given both the challenges of finding a new name and then rebuilding the lost equity. In this episode, Dave Deasy, CMO of TrustArc, formerly TRUSTe, walks us through their entire renaming process. Over the course of this interview, you'll learn how to tell when a name change is in order and a concrete process for the development of the new name. Involving an outside naming firm was only part of the answer. Another important component was the role of the CEO and his insistence that the executive committee build consensus together. Along the way, Deasy shows his artfulness, encouraging his branding agency to "get crazy" when thinking about the logo design, a suggestion that resulted in the addition of a fin to the logo and a whole new story line for the introduction. This is just one of the many insightful stories you'll find in this episode.

On this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, world-famous influencer Nala Cat—who is, in fact, a cat—joins RTU to meow her thoughts on brand building, partnership marketing, and her general marketing philosophy. As she usually does, Nala brought along her two interpreters/owners, Pookie and Shannon, to help put the Nala Cat marketing philosophy into words. In the discussion, they'll explore exactly what goes into building Nala Cat's brand, which is notable for—other than being awesome and adorable—boasting 4+ million Instagram followers, earning Nala her own CAA agent (the only cat to do so), and so much more. Additionally, we'll be donating $1 (up to 1K) for every download of this episode, and the money will go to an awesome charity selected by Nala herself: Love Your Feral Felines, an all-volunteer, registered 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to rescuing cats and giving them a second chance at life. Check out LYFF's website, and make sure to check out Nala's episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite!

If you're a fan of renegade thinking, then you'll probably be a fan of David Thompson, CMO of Freshworks, and serial bold marketer. His marketing has historically been fairly subversive, think responding to competitions' hiring of Cindy Crawford with a RuPaul-led Superbowl commercial (in the early aughts). Or hiring a blimp with "#FailsForce" written on it to circle Salesforce Tower, the tallest building in San Francisco, and home of Freshworks competitor Salesforce. When asked about being afraid of backlash to his marketing, Thompson responded that, if you aren't a little afraid of your marketing, it's probably not worth putting out into the world. He likes to partially gauge this by seeing how his CEO reacts to the pitch—if the CEO immediately mentions that the board will need to take a look, you're on the right track. Learn more about bold, tactical marketing, rapid rebrands, bartending for Meryl Streep before a performance (her go-to before performing is whiskey), and more on this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite.

What comes to mind when you hear "Spartan?" Probably some version of the imagery found in 2006's blockbuster, 300. Scenes of great battle, troops acting in perfect unison to overcome odds in a gritty, ticket-selling fashion. While the Spartan brand we'll be discussing in this episode doesn't boast life-threatening battles, it does feature some dramatic challenges, the kind that help to build teamwork. And given the importance of building and sustaining teamwork for the success of just about every organization, you're going to want to hear how the CMO of Spartan, Carola Jain, pulls this all together. On this episode of RTU, Jain discusses the importance of a great team—and not just a supportive CEO or an understanding CFO; Carola emphasizes the importance of the people you work with, the people in the company trenches, not the owners or executives. She discusses how commitment to a purpose can help motivate employees, and how they can boost the effectiveness of internal rollouts. Beyond that, Jain explores leadership, collaboration, purpose, highlighting the Spartan women, and adds in what might be a piping hot take in the business world: "don't email." Tune in for more! Is there anything that drives the whole business? What are some crucial elements of your operation, marketing or otherwise? I think nothing works without a great team. And oftentimes you forget: It's the people that are not necessarily in the board-level conversations. And you really need to spend time and understand what makes him tick. Why do they believe in the company? They don't own the company. They don't necessarily own all the shares. So, how do you think about translating what makes me come to work every day to everybody in the team? And I recently devoted more time to these informal sessions where we explore that. I love working in a way where I can do a lot of interesting things—how do I bring that same opportunity to everybody on my team? Can you share any big or surprising learnings you've encountered in your career thus far? I think one of the biggest learnings, as well as something I'm continuing to learn about, are the fast lanes and slow lanes on projects. How do you create a fast lane where you can always tackle issues, and really drive forward? When is that the right move? I recently got advice from a mentor to always have these stand-up 10-minute meetings. There's only one topic that can be discussed. And everybody goes away and does something that gets implemented immediately. Looking at those moments where speed and efficiency are priority, as opposed to moments where a slower deliberate approach may be crucial.

How many languages do you speak? No judgements here—just curious. But, a safe bet would say that the majority of people reading this have a primary language, and then a rudimentary understanding of a second (if that). Now, this is probably fine for the most part, but if you generate some content that needs to be consumed by prospects in other countries, you'll need a translation service like Smartling. But, Smartling's marketing doesn't just revolve around citing how they solve business needs, it celebrates the translators—the people—who make it run, and the stories that each translator has. On this episode of RTU, Adrian Cohn, director of Brand Strategy and Comms, and Jack Welde, Founder & CEO, discuss how they do that. Smartling's values highlight humanity and personality, and they've found considerable success taking those values to heart when marketing. Tune in to hear more about their efforts, how they engage employees before rolling out a campaign, their approach to measurement, and more. Plus, hear more about their most renegade marketing effort yet: a beautiful, printed book that tells the stories of 12 Smartling translators, both through beautiful prose and stunning imagery. What inspired the story-based approach? What are we in business to do? We're trying to help companies to reach people around the world. It's very human. It's a communication process. I would argue that, in a world of marketing personalization, translation is the most basic form of marketing. Speak my language if you want to reach me, right? So I said: hey, there's got to be a way to tell a story like this, that perhaps allows our translators and our buyers to connect more and really remember that balance between art and science, not just the technology, but also the humanity. How'd you settle on the book? How'd you start putting the content out there? We didn't have a calculation as to whether or not this would work, but we did have affirmation from customers who continuously told us about how important the translators were to them. This leap of faith was rooted in our customers and their feedback. When we went to produce this, it was extremely challenging. We had to send someone to 11 or 12 destinations around the world. There were dozens of trips, flights booked, hotel rooms—very complicated to execute. But what I was really excited about is that we decided to produce and roll out this campaign in a very agile way. We didn't actually produce everything and keep it to ourselves until one big launch. As soon as we started getting images from Elizabeth, we started dripping them out across social media. We started incorporating them in our presentations around the world. It was a very different way of unveiling a brand marketing campaign, but every single time we dripped something new, we got great feedback.

"When the time is right, you'll know." It feels like an almost trope-ish answer to many of life's questions, or like the vague wisdom from a mentor in a karate movie. Unfortunately, the utility of that phrase really doesn't extend to executing a rebrand. So, how did Acquia know it was time to rebrand? Acquia, an enterprise software company, just topped $200 million in revenue, and has achieved 57% growth in the past three years. Clearly, they've been doing some things right, and can feel good about their recent decision to rebrand. So, how did CMO Lynne Capozzi know the timing was right? Well, it took a quite a bit of marketing know-how, a need to stand out in the market, and a desire to really emphasize the company's purpose: to help people "experience digital freedom." Tune in to this week's episode to hear more about Lynne's extensive marketing background, their approach to a successful rebrand, the importance of getting internal buy-in, and more.

A major CRM company, Springbig, is blazing a trail. They've become a go-to provider in the industry they focus on, they've got a 98% customer retention rate, and have their entire staff supporting a brand purpose: Help retailers accomplish their goals, every day. On this episode, co-founder and CEO Jeffrey Harris explains how they managed to come into a new industry and quickly establish themselves as key players. The kicker? The area that Springbig pivoted to focus on is the rapidly flowering, marijuana dispensary industry. The cannabis tech industry—think martech, but specifically for cannabis companies—is booming. Updated legislature and an overall cultural shift in perception are two especially large factors in this market's rapid growth, and as such, a massive new marketplace is opening up, meaning companies have huge opportunities, but need to move quick. Springbig recognized this and set to work identifying and understanding their target. Now, they're sought out at industry conferences, expanding their vast clientele, and helping dispensaries optimize customer messaging with advanced metrics—After 4 visits, Springbig can actually predict with 90% accuracy what time a dispensary's customers will have their 5th visit! Tune in to this week's episode to hear more about their rapid ascent in dispensary circles, their approach to quickly gaining an accurate understanding of the market, how they use marketing to foster loyalty, and more. Plus, take a look at a couple highlights below: So, you made the decision to boldly commit to one, new-ish vertical market. How'd you approach it? When we got into it, we didn't realize what pent-up demand there was in the space for a service like ours. When we got into the space, there was one competitor that had gotten in before us and they were doing very well. And they were they were well-known. We were basically the other guys. We're now at the point where there's probably three other players besides us doing similar things in this space, in this vertical. And we probably are the most well-known now and probably have the most customers. You know, partly because we really delved into it. We really got to understand not only the general market, but the state-by-state market, because every state has its own market in this industry. You really have to continue and commit to those cycles of learning to try to get to a place where you can accelerate your success Were there some things that you did to help market your organization that were, in retrospect, particularly effective? Well, it's an industry now, but when we got into it about three years ago, I would call it more of a community than an industry. When there's this cause going on, there's a community built around that cause. And where does a community meet and get together? In person, at conferences. In other industries that I've participated in, you go to a conference and you may see the marketing managers, or the marketing directors of these companies. In cannabis, the owners were there. All of them. That was where we wanted to spend the most dollars and the most time. So, we basically brought people onboard, and walked through those conferences. We were advertising beforehand to let people know we were there, we were trying to do everything that we could to get the exposure that we needed. This past year, just to fast forward about a year and a half, at the big conference in Las Vegas—it's called MJ BizCon—we finally had people seeking us out. Coming over like "Oh, I was looking for you guys."

Most CMOs "only" have to focus on businesses or consumers as their primary target. Avid, a multimedia tech company, actually markets products to both audiences, a challenge that CMO Melissa Puls relishes. For Puls, the buyer in either market is still a human, a person with creative ambitions. And while a giant TV network might be spending a lot more money on far more complex editing equipment, their end goals are often the same – produce awesome content and share it with the world. As such, Puls helped the company rally around a shared purpose of "powering greater creators," an idea that also helped hold all their global marketing efforts together. In our lively conversation, we covered virtually every facet of modern marketing, from what to do in the first hundred days to building a content marketing machine. Importantly, we spent a lot of time talking about the power of having a purpose-driven story statement that is unique, own-able, and inspires employees, customers and prospects regardless of job or business size. Ultimately, Puls helped Avid recognize the humanity of all of its customers. Tune in to this week's episode to hear about that, the value of balancing face-to-face marketing with digital, the importance of a collaborative leadership team, the number one most important thing a CMO needs to do in a subscription-based world, and much, much more!

Simon Schaffer-Goldman, of Case Paper, is really just your run-of-the-mill CMO. Well, except maybe for starting out as a shepherd in New Zealand. Also, maybe his portfolio of stunning photography and his penchant for comedy writing are somewhat uncommon. Oh, and the willingness to lead a bold rebrand with a new approach that strays pretty far from the typical tone of B2B paper companies. Hm. Okay, maybe Simon isn't so run-of-the-mill after all. Though, run-of-the-mill could make for some pretty decent paper industry puns... We'll file that one away for now. On this week's RTU, Simon and Drew discuss Case Paper's recent update to their branding and marketing, including their new commitment to being "On the Case," how introducing a purpose-driven branding campaign can improve the company culture and operations, agency partnerships (including with yours truly!), and Case's history—and future—with absurdity, humor, and, generally, having a good time cutting through. Listen in for more!

On last week's RTU episode 155, Kim Whitler and Drew dove into a wide range of marketing topics, including exploring the CMO/CEO relationship in detail. Given the subject matter, it was only appropriate that the episode was recorded in the presence of 6 B2B marketing leaders. Now, in the second part of the interview, those marketing leaders start guiding the discussion. Tune in to hear their questions on the subjects of branding vs. demand budgets, how CMOs should engage with other C-suite members, and whether modern CMOs should skew towards a quant-mindset or a creative mindset.

What do you get when you combine a dash of academic rigor, a hint a marketing obsession (in the best way possible), a few critiques of modern CMO tendencies, and a live audience of some of the sharpest B2B marketers out there? That'd be this week's episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, with Kim Whitler, Assistant Professor of Business Administration at UVA's Darden School of Business. Host Drew Neisser and Kim cover quite a bit of ground on this one, drawing on Kim's 250+ published Forbes Articles—including a comprehensive look at some CMO challenges, in The Trouble With CMOs, published in the Harvard Business Review—Drew's 300+ CMO interviews, and the shared knowledge of 6 B2B marketing leaders weighing in. The conversation explores the often tenuous relationships with CMOs and CEOs, how those can be improved, the ideal type of CMO to lead an effective marketing team, how leadership can change consumer behavior, and much, much more. Given the expansive subject material, this episode will actually be broken into 2 parts—be on the lookout for part 2 next week, but for now, listen in to hear about some research-backed tactics every creative marketer needs to consider.

In the age of 1:1 personalization, it might be considered heresy to suggest that persona-based marketing is a false idol. But hey, we're renegades, so of course we're going to challenge convention. The idea of personas is not necessarily bad. You can never know enough about your target audiences especially when facing 11-person buying committees as is the case with so many enterprise sales efforts. But there is a big difference between 1:1 personalization and personas, which are often an amalgamation of clichés by job title-- like all CFOs are risk averse and all IT people are data-driven. Sure, many CFOs tend to be risk averse and many IT people like numbers. Now what? Does that mean you present you product as the least risky to the CFO and the most data-rich to the IT person? In a word, no. As it turns out the different story for different targets approach simply doesn't work when you're selling large solutions to large companies and Gartner's Brent Adamson has the research to prove it. In this episode, host Drew Neisser gets on his anti-persona pulpit by interviewing himself. That's one less persona to cope with on this show perhaps making the medium the message? Too meta? You decide.

When Intuit's Mary-Ann Somers took over as SVP & Chief Growth Officer of the Consumer Group business unit, she wanted to build upon the success of her predecessor, and encourage a culture of experimentation. She wanted a marketing machine that led with inquiry, holistically understood the business, and got close to its customers. She wanted big things for the consumer business—of course, when you're Intuit, which pulls in about $7B in revenue annually, employs over 8,000 people, and has a consumer product portfolio with names like TurboTax and Mint, you're already going pretty big. Still, Somers and her team were ready to continue building on the software giant's momentum. On this episode, she discusses her past in consumer packaged goods, including championing digital marketing at Hershey's (and moving 35% of their efforts to digital in just 6 months), her commitment to clean, crisp, and single-minded messaging, brand management, and why marketers ought to operate with a holistic view of the company. Listen in to her interview, recorded in front of a live audience, to hear more!

At Drugstore Publicis, a luxury shop on Champs-Élysées, you'll find more than a typical pharmacy. You'll find Joel Robuchon's L'Atelier Etoile restaurant, a bookstore, a cinema, imported olive oils, cigars, and wines. Plus, they are also actually a drugstore in case you need a prescription filled. This summer, you may have also found host Drew Neisser chatting with Corneliu Vilsan, Director of Marketing Operations EMEA & LATAM for Pernod Ricard. Running the marketing of an international beverage titan, with a portfolio ranging from Jameson Whiskey, to Malibu Rum, to Absolute Vodka and far beyond, is certainly a tall order. On this episode, listen in as Corneliu shares how he does it, and the wide range of tools he uses, from influencer marketing, to cultural analysis, new approaches to data analysis and social listening, and more.

If someone ran up to you and said, "Congrats, you're now the CMO of a $165M tech company with about 500 employees," what would you do? First, maybe celebrate a bit—that's a pretty significant achievement—but next, you've got to form a plan. Are you pursuing growth? Acquiring companies? Rebranding? Pivoting away from tech and towards producing artisanal hand soaps? Granted, Sara Larsen, CMO of Brightcove (a $165M cloud video platform with about 500 employees), didn't just get her role from some random guy on the street—she'd stepped into it after an extensive career in tech marketing at companies like IBM and SAP—but hopefully that thought exercise gave you just the slightest glimpse into the sort of decisions that need to get made when you take the helm of a ship like Brightcove. Coming into the role, Larsen wanted to aim for growth, but not just for the company; the entire category of online video could be expanded with the right approach. Now, ten months later, the company has grown and is hard at work pushing its category further. Tune in to this interview to hear how they're approaching that, as well as other insights regarding career management, successful acquisition, customer experience, employee engagement, and more.

What's it take to be a marketing leader? Well, you can have boundless knowledge of metrics, have a mind for strategy somewhere in the neighborhood of Sun Tzu's, and write copy that would make Hemingway blush, but just having the sharpest tools on your belt won't cut it. Above all else, you need to able to mobilize your team. As Thomas Barta puts it, you need to be energetic, you need to inspire, and you need to be a role model. As the authority on marketing leadership, you'd be wise to heed his call. Barta was a partner and senior marketer at McKinsey, led the world's largest study of marketing leadership (68k+ assessments!), published a book on the subject, and is a regular contributor for multiple news outlets. He's consulted and marketed for 20+ years, in 14 industries, across 45 countries. You could say he's picked up a thing or two on the way—tune in to this week's special episode, recorded with a live audience of top-tier marketers and CMOs (who contribute along the way), to hear more about marketing leadership, effective attribution, learning from the customer voice, and more.

In this special episode, three accomplished CMOs share their experiences as women in the marketing world. The featured guests include Kathy Button-Bell, SVP & CMO of Emerson, Tolithia Kornweibel, CMO of Gusto, and Jean English, who was CMO of NetApp at the time of this interview (she's now at Palo Alto Networks). While the glass ceiling seems to have been broken for CMOs awhile ago, distinct challenges remain. Each of the guests explore the barriers they've overcome and share hard-earned advice on navigating the modern workplace. It's important to note that these women have been vocal advocates for change, having worked to organize and develop female leaders within their organizations. Tune in to hear more.

Bon jour, and welcome to the first-ever overseas RTU! This episode was recorded from Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport. Why? This beautiful airport, in the spirit of the show, serves as a perfect symbol of breaking into new territories, and acts as a wonderful hub for exploration. Well… That, and this week's guest, Jan Huckfeldt, had a flight to catch after this interview. After all, the former Global CMO of Motorola and Lenovo, and current chairman of Ledger's advisory board, has quite a few places to be. Still, his busy schedule didn't stop him from taking some time to dive into a few crucial traits every great marketing leader should have. Jan helps break down how leaders need to approach inspiring and engaging employees, but also how to work towards a purpose, how to protect your marketing, and how to instill trust. He explores the subject in more detail, and also discusses broader brand strategy tactics, and his extensive marketing career, in this interview.

Lorraine Barber-Miller, CMO of ADP, has a tough mission: make ADP a category of one. That means helping push her legacy brand past its perception of just being a payroll solution. And, though it's a tough goal, ADP's marketing machine has been firing on all cylinders and getting it done. Lorraine and her team have been hard at work implementing the company's first-ever marketing plan. They've crafted a new brand purpose to help differentiate in a crowded field, made a new character the hero of their story, and have invested in massive outdoor, digital, and print campaigns to bring their reinvigorated brand to the world. Tune in to hear how they told a story that no one else could, and how they made it real.

In last week's episode, we traced the career of Noah Brier from a copywriter who didn't know what copy was, all the way to co-founder of an immensely successful content marketing platform that's, to date, received north of $100M in funding. On the second part of the interview, Drew and Noah take a closer look at brand positioning and content marketing. Noah shares his thoughts on where brands are going too exclusive, and how orchestration is a thorn in content's side. He also dives into the key storytelling alongside the customer journey, and in one ten-minute stretch, shares a veritable boatload of illuminating advice on how to improve your content. Listen in!

Percolate, a software company, has received north of $100M in funding. Not a number to be scoffed at. In this episode—a fairly atypical one—Noah Brier, the founder, recalls and examines the path he followed to get to this point. Noah started with a job at American Demographics, a now-defunct marketing and advertising magazine, moved into a copywriting position (despite not knowing what 'copywriting' was) at a familiar agency (Renegade LLC!), and wound his way through a few other roles and side projects, twists, turns, ups and downs before reaching the point he's at today. Now, Percolate is making a name as a leading enterprise content marketing platform, and he can lay claim to a true wealth of experience. Noah's journey is, in many ways, extraordinary. It follows unconventional routes, shows moments of peerless creative intuition and spark, and can ideally help guide each and every aspiring marketing leader out there. Listen in to hear about Noah's entry into marketing, how he advises developing and managing your career, and how he approached starting his own, now massively successful, company. Being an entrepreneur isn't easy, but Noah's model can offer some insights into how it can happen. As he says, "you can't go through the experience of being an entrepreneur and not make a bunch of mistakes. You just hope to make fewer of them the next time around."

Millions of data points. A singular vision. Those are at the core of the new NetApp campaign, and the results were pretty significant. Over 70% of folks who saw the campaign saw NetApp as "a new company," while website traffic tripled. So, yeah, pretty successful. So how'd they pull it off? A blend of tactful digital rollouts, account-based marketing, and more. It also came down to the idea of being a data visionary, and that, as CMO Jean English puts it, "everyone wants to be a visionary. On this episode, Jean further explores the notion of being a visionary, and the crucial role boldness played in shaping this successful campaign. In forming the campaign, and the marketing mindset, Jean wanted her team to stretch the idea as far as it could go, and then go a little bit further. She wanted to make sure people had far-reaching ideas, and then she wanted to test and experiment. Listen in to hear more about her fail fast and move forward mentality, about aligning her vision across the company, and more.

How do you become a $4-billion company by selling free software? It almost sounds like a trick question, but it's been done. Just ask Tim Yeaton, CMO of Red Hat, a $4-billion, open-source software company. The marketing's been a major driver of success, and as Tim Yeaton puts it, has been the glue that permeates across the company and enforces everything—from product, to community, to end user. Though Yeaton starts out by discussing how marketing supports large tech companies, and how it has fostered a community as unique as Red Hat's, he starts to break down the individual elements that can be applied to any B2B brand looking to get their marketing gears turning: simultaneous brand building and demand gen, developing a collaborative, meritocratic culture, effective agency collaboration, and perhaps most importantly, the benefits of simply telling a great story. Lastly, though it may not be the most critical driver of success, it is probably worth mentioning that Red Hat is likely the first-ever company with an advisory committee built entirely of employees that have had the logo tattooed on them—now that's dedication.

How can a brand save the world? They could do something flashy, like repel an alien invasion or topple Godzilla, or they could do something real and substantive, like the World Surf League. When the WSL isn't helping pro surfers shred the next big curl (are we saying that right?) or giving sports fans a great way to soak up some rays, they're preparing for the future. As a sport deeply intertwined with the environment, that means committing to going carbon neutral. Sophie Goldschmidt, CEO of the WSL, has helped this goal permeate the entirety of the organization, and has noted how crucial it is to have a brand purpose worth rallying behind. On this episode, she discusses her athletics-centered marketing career, from Adidas, to the World Tennis Association, the NBA, and Rugby Football Union, as well as her commitment to brand purpose, engaging with the customers, effective company leadership, and more.

What does a B2B brand's website have in common with a SuperBall? A significant bounce rate! Okay, maybe not the funniest joke, but it does transition well into discussing a pretty real issue with many B2B brands: they're boring! There are plenty exceptions, of course, but far too often, B2B brands end up being, as this week's guest puts it, "B2Boring." Ryan Urban is the CEO & Founder of BounceX, a company that helps brands optimize their websites (and ditch the high bounce rates). In examining countless B2B brands, Urban has gotten a great sense of where these companies tend to go wrong, and so much of it ties to these brands being dull, playing it safe, and failing to show any personality. Their websites and content too often lack story, and end up being "coagulated, congealed buzzwords" that'll just bounce prospects away like a trampoline. So, if you're interested in hearing about how brands can be a little more exciting, what landing pages need to be successful, and more, tune in to this week's Renegade Thinkers Unite.

Email is still innovative...right? One might argue that email marketing has become the Facebook of marketing strategies— It was cool at first, it hasn't declined yet, but everyone and their grandmother is now on it. So what are the trendy marketing kids using now? Erik Huberman, CEO & Founder of Hawke Media, gives us the answer: SMS. As it turns out, customers only engage with marketing emails about 3% of the time, while the average click-through rate for SMS marketing tallies up to 30%. That's a number to write home about. Erik knows that these statistics are too important to ignore and knows that they're indicative of a larger shift in B2B. Acknowledging that shift, and moving with it, has helped Erik's young company grow from 7 to 160 employees in just about 5 years. On this week's episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Drew chats with Erik about the shift in traditional advertising towards more efficient digital strategies, and how B2B marketers can navigate it artfully. Learn about how this shift isn't for everyone, the importance of product demand, what an outsourced CMO does, and more.

What do you need to make a big splash? A big ship, one would assume, is a terrific place to start. So that's exactly what Agari used to launch their new brand, the purpose of which is written loudly and proudly on the walls of their headquarters: "Agari protects digital communications to ensure humanity prevails over evil." That's a pretty bold way of explaining that your company is an advanced cybersecurity firm for email. But a bold mission statement is exactly what companies need to grow. At Agari, this statement is deeply woven into the community fabric, from the board members down to rank-and-file employees. On this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Armen Najarian, CMO, discusses how they made the mission real, and how having that meaningful guidance of saving and protecting the world of digital communications, helped drive brand, product development, company growth, and more.

How do you effectively lead the marketing efforts of a 20,000+ employee tech giant well enough to make it into the American Marketing Association's Hall of Fame? Sure—the question may sound a bit specific, but that journey is chock full of valuable takeaways for marketers at any sized company, in any line of work. Lucky enough for RTU listeners, this week's episode features Ann Lewnes. Ann is a recent inductee into the AMA Hall of Fame and is currently the CMO of Adobe, a company that doesn't really need much of an introduction. In her time at Adobe, she's established herself as a trail-blazing, "flag planter" who gives great attention to the big picture. Listen in to this episode to hear about how she does that, her own marketing journey, the content strategy for Adobe, building brand trust, inspiring the people around you, and more.

Customers: What are they? Where do they come from, and what do they want? These are some of the great, cosmic questions we humans may never be able to answer. Just kidding, it's actually (from a high-level, conceptual viewpoint) pretty simple. We're all doing business with people, and people matter. If you keep your customer happy, great things happen. Going a little further, companies need to spend more time focusing on customer activation. Customers can and should be advocates for your brand, but to achieve that, they have to be treated well. Simple enough concept, but execution will take a little work. On this episode of RTU, Kevin Spurway, SVP of Marketing at Appian, an enterprise application development platform, talks about the high level of commitment and effort required to really engage with customers, especially existing ones. He discusses what he calls "post-sale marketing," which is how Appian has been so successful at developing meaningful relationships with its client base. Tune in to hear about post-sale marketing, celebrating customer success, customer-engagement pitfalls to avoid, and more!

When you order a pizza, you want it delivered quickly. It should prepared, placed in one of those fancy heat-retaining delivery bags, and be at your door within the half hour. Boom. Simple. A brand transformation is not a pizza (stop the presses!). Most marketing endeavors, in fact, benefit immensely from first slowing things down. Do your research, let ideas cool off while you consider them, and make sure your efforts are built on a strong, deliberately crafted foundation. Then, order your team a pizza to celebrate a well-executed campaign. That's part of what Dawn Colossi, CMO at FocusVision, a customer insights company, preaches. Research is absolutely key. No matter how tight the deadline, how urgent the project, it'll always be beneficial to start off with the research, even if a light, initial round. Tune in to hear more about effective researching, tactful surveys, and how to be more deliberate in your marketing efforts.

What's your brand truth? Actually—let's pull back a bit: what is a brand truth? You could give it a few different names, but in essence, your brand truth is a concise guiding principle that informs virtually every aspect of the company's operation and, importantly, can't be dismissed. In the case of UTAK, a toxicology quality control provider (serving chemistry labs, forensics experts, and more), they nailed it in two words: "Control Freaks." On this episode of RTU, CMO, and Chief Control Freak, Matt Kopp joins the show to discuss the origins of "Control Freaks," and how two simple words have influenced every arm of the company, from product development, to customer engagement, to marketing. He also dives into the benefits of bringing in an outside agency (Renegade LLC) to develop the idea, the importance of internal buy-in, how to stand out in a crowded B2B market, and more.

About 5 years ago, Rebecca Stone joined LiveRamp and the CEO said, "I want you to be as sophisticated as possible in advertising, and how you use it." At the time, the company had two sales development reps, a funnel that wasn't necessarily feeding leads properly, and a young tech stack and tons of potential, so Rebecca got to work on the company's digital transformation. Now, the company has a tech stack built from roughly 40 different tools, broken into different operating nodes, a marketing team that supports 20 sales development reps, an in-house data lake, and data analytics models that can accurately predict how marketing spend will translate to revenue—a sort of holy grail for marketing analytics. On this episode, Rebecca shares her journey at LiveRamp, a platform that helps brands get personalized ads in front of users across the web, and how she helped build the well-oiled marketing machine that her department has become.

You might think the first step to asteroid mining is get a rocket ship. Usually you would be right. But on this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Sean Regan, Head of Product Marketing at Atlassian, is taking a different approach. To Sean, mining an asteroid speaks more to the idea that a portion of your marketing, or overall company strategy, has to seek out untapped, sometimes hard-to-reach areas, otherwise you'll just be chipping away at coal in the same mines as everyone else, looking for small, incremental bumps in value. As Sean says about marketing, "if you're not nervous about it—even a little bit—there's a pretty good chance it doesn't matter." At Atlassian, a software developer aimed at improving collaborative productivity for companies, Sean keeps asteroid mining front-and-center when formulating marketing strategies. On today's episode, join in as he and Drew talk about how to bring emotion and creativity to science-driven marketing, how product development and marketing is contributing to Atlassian's 100M monthly active user goals, how to get customers to become brand evangelists, and more.

If you were constructing a bingo board based on the lingo in tech company discussions, you'd have "disrupt" right in the middle square, as it's basically a freebie. What's far less common, is seeing a company actually follow through on that disruption, but that's what SAP has managed to do. Alicia Tillman, CMO, has been hard at work trying to re-envision how SAP presents itself, largely driven by the CEO's ambitious goal to crack the top 10 most valuable brands in the world. So, Alicia took the reins, set about repositioning the company, and has since seen SAP move from 21st most valuable brand to 17th—their highest growth rate since 2009. Quite a few cylinders have been firing to make this happen: Their commitment to rallying behind a bold, company-wide purpose, their internal buy-in and alignment, their dedication to creativity and storytelling, and of course, good old fashioned hard work, have all played a major role in kicking SAP into the next gear. For more of Alicia's keys to effective marketing, and to get a closer look at how one of the most valuable companies maintains and builds on its success, check out the full interview.

In the utopian holster of magical marketing bullets, employee advocacy is right up there with viral videos (think Ice Bucket Challenge) and real-time marketing (remember Oreo's 'dunking in the dark' social posts?) But, unlike the last two options, employee advocacy is actually something most companies can execute consistently, assuming they follow a few critical steps. First, you have to run a company that employees actually enjoy working at and feel comfortable advocating for. Second, you need to allow your employees the latitude to speak in their own voice not just the brand's. And third, it really helps if you have a tech platform that makes it easy for employees to advocate on the brand's behalf. On this episode, Drew chats with Glenn Gaudet, CEO and founder of GaggleAMP, an employee advocacy enablement tool. In their conversation, Drew and Glenn dive into the issues most marketers face when developing these programs, how to build a culture of eager sharers and the importance of segmenting potential advocates. They also discuss how employee advocacy programs need to align with broader marketing strategies, a few dos and don'ts, and more. Listen in and learn how to get employees caring about sharing.

What the heck is a purpose-driven story statement and why are they so critical to successful marketing? These are the question Drew answers on the first-ever installment of Drew's Takeaways, a special RTU episode where he distills and discusses key topics and themes of recent interviews. On this episode, Drew breaks down why and how a company can rally behind a powerful, purpose-driven story statement. Through the discussion of two such statements—one that worked, and one that fulfilled its promise—Drew helps shed some light on how a brand can craft a meaningful identity that engages employees, customers, and prospects, while helping drive the brand forward. To hear more about being purpose-driven, and to take a closer look at statements like Family Circle's Where Family Comes First and SurveyMonkey's We Power the Curious, tune in!

A true, purpose-driven brand doesn't happen overnight. What it really takes is a goal, specific actions, and at times, a bit of sacrifice. For Bank of the West, their mission meant, in the short-term, potentially leaving money on the table in the name of responsible investment of customers' money, and transparency as to what that money was doing. That initial cost was worth it, as the long-term benefits, like new customers, talent attraction, and differentiation, outweighed any money lost. Now, when high-profile job candidates ask, "Why should I join you? How are you helping the world?" Bank of the West has a great an answer—they're one of very few banks that has restrictive financing policies on things like coal, fracking, and arctic drilling. On this episode of RTU, learn how CMO Ben Stuart and his team helped shape this relatively small financial institution to become a competitive, purpose-driven company with marketing that doesn't feel like an uninvited guest. The discussion touches on crafting a tight strategy, gaining internal buy-in, data analytics, the keys to differentiation, and more on how to craft brilliant marketing.

Payroll tends to be a purely transactional moment between employer and employee, but Gusto is working to shift that to being a "life moment," potentially one of delight (as receiving a paycheck should be!). Effectively reaching their audience while balancing internal alignment, a hefty tech stack, and their mission statement—to create a world where work empowers a better life—can be something of a juggling act. Tolithia Kornweibel, head of marketing, and her team at Gusto, are up to the task. On today's RTU, Drew and Tolithia talk about how to effectively build a demand engine, how to demonstrate value internally to gain support, and how to keep track of your brand through a balance of qualitative and quantitative assessment, all while staying true to a brand mission. Tune in! Connect With Tolithia: On LinkedIn Via gusto.com Connect with Drew http://renegade.com/ On LinkedIn On Twitter On Facebook On Instagram

Silicon Valley is home to thousands of B2B startups—and one of the the newest B2B unicorns. Brex offers a corporate credit card more built around the ever-changing needs of a startup, and they've been valued at over $1 billion. One of the secrets? Champagne and chocolate. Brex's overall success has tied heavily into their bold marketing, and on this episode of RTU, Chief Sales Officer Sam Blond, and CFO/CMO Michael Tannenbaum, discuss it in detail. From identifying your targets, to orchestrating outdoor campaigns, to in-depth attribution models, Brex has been firing on all cylinders. Listen in to learn more. Be sure to listen. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts - Stitcher - or Podsearch What You'll Learn How Brex found its current market Brex is located in Silicon Valley, where there are thousands of B2B startups. Brex's founders stumbled upon the painfulness of managing corporate credit cards when they could not get a credit card for one of their own new business. Their experience demonstrated a business opportunity and a marketplace in the niche of corporate cards for startups. Typically, founders of startups had to personally guarantee a corporate card. Even with millions of dollars in the bank, these businesses would have 20k-30k spending limits placed on them that were nowhere high enough to support the spending of a company. Brex instead uses businesses bank accounts and bank activity to determine the spending limits on corporate cards. Michael and Sam point out that startups move and grow too quickly to have spending limits determined on a yearly basis, so Brex is constantly evaluating what a business needs and what limits will be. Their business model has resonated especially with tech startups and B2B businesses in Silicon Valley. Why outdoor marketing works To launch its company, Brex turned to outdoor marketing. With already 100 clients prior to launch, Brex knew it had a good story to tell with a large impact for startups. They wanted to maximize the one time impact of the company's launch. With a highly targeted market of startups concentrated in the San Francisco area, they purchased as much outdoor inventory as they could. Brex flooded the market with billboards informing the public that they were the first corporate credit card for startups. Outdoor marketing allowed them to go broader and reach a larger number of people. Brex's unique email campaign Prior to working with Brex, Sam had lots of experiencing testing outbound email copy. For Brex's unique email campaign, they coupled creative email copy with Brazilian chocolates or champagne. Brex was able to research companies that seemed like a good fit for their corporate card. Then, they targeted specific CFO's in the Bay area to receive these gifts, and then an email from Brex shortly after. There was a combination of these emails and outdoor marketing to continue to get the word out there that there was an alternative to the current idea of a corporate credit card. Timeline [2:23] Who Sam and Michael are [10:35] How Brex found this viable market [15:28] Why Brex chose to use outdoor to launch its product [18:02] The "Brex It" message [22:45] Outdoor correlation to measurable results [25:09] How's Brex's email campaigns are different (and successful) [28:45] Viable CPA and the lifetime value per customer Connect With Michael Tannenbaum & Sam Blond: Connect with Michael Tannenbaum on LinkedIn Connect with Sam Blond on LinkedIn Resources & People Mentioned www.Brex.com Connect with Drew http://renegade.com/ On LinkedIn On Twitter On Facebook On Instagram

Perhaps Kathy Button Bell's title should change from "Chief Marketing Officer" to "Chief Complexity Reduction Officer"—after all, she's been simplifying things at Emerson Electric for over 20 years. Over that time, marketing has become complex due to the advent of new tools and the increased precision of targeting, among other things, but sometimes marketers need to shift their priorities towards making things easy to understand. On this episode of RTU, Kathy and Drew discuss unnecessary complexity, employee engagement, the importance of—and keys to—longevity in marketing, and perhaps most importantly, how to keep your marketing brave, human, and uncluttered. You won't want to miss Kathy's insights! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts - Stitcher - or Podsearch What You'll Learn How to stay fresh as a tenured CMO In a world where there is massive CMO turnover, Kathy Button Bell has not just survived for 20 years as CMO at Emerson, but she has thrived! She digs in and stays at one place by working on culture and driving it in a positive direction. She stays fresh in her job by being transparent. The world is pushing her to change every day, and she says to not be afraid of this change but to run with it! Marketing today has become overly complicated with all sorts of new channels, but it's not becoming more effective as a whole. Return to your main purpose. Instead of advertising your way to greatness, you have to earn your way to greatness. Emerson's "We See" Marketing Campaign Emerson launched its "We See" marketing campaign for its 125th anniversary. This campaign started internally with videos, banners, and information going first to employees. This campaign plays on Emerson's core brand idea: Consider It Solved. Focussed on video advertising, it highlights the warmth and care from Emerson by showing how they enable life-saving drugs to be made faster and allow quicker access to natural gas. Kathy explains that they chose to go broad with this campaign to drive the relevancy of their business and remind people who they are! With this campaign, she has set the table for other businesses and created an umbrella for the campaign to be stretched and applied locally. 2 dos and a don't for other CMOs Kathy Button Bell shares her biggest dos and don'ts for other CMOs. She says to be the Chief Complexity Reduction Officer. Meaning, a great CMO should reduce complexity in an organization and make others' jobs easier. A great CMO should also reduce complexity externally by creating messaging that is simple and understandable. Secondly, she shares that CMO's should always do the thing that is a little unexpected to keep people's attention. For example, when Emerson wanted to create a video on its core values, instead of filming its employees talking about values, the children of employees were filmed! A small change such as this keeps people interested. Kathy says that as a CMO, you should never be defensive. Defensiveness is the enemy and makes you inauthentic. Timeline [2:01] Who is Kathy Button Bell [3:47] How she dug in and stayed at one place as a CMO [11:24] Living out her moto: Be Brave and Have Fun! [18:48] How to stay fresh when you've been in the same job [22:12] Emerson Electric's new iteration of a campaign [28:21] Kathy Button Bell's guiding principles [31:30] Measuring the success of the "We See" campaign [34:16] Two dos and a don't for other CMOs Connect With Guest: Kathy Button Bell's Bioon Emerson's Website Connect with Kathy Button Bell on LinkedIn Follow Kathy Button Bell on Twitter Follow Kathy Button Bell on Facebook Resources & People Mentioned Video: Emerson Kids Website: Emerson.com Connect with Drew http://renegade.com/ On LinkedIn On Twitter On Facebook On Instagram

Call an Uber, order from Amazon, book a hotel… You can do all of these things instantly—even at 4 AM. People today want commodities quickly and with round the clock access. Believe it or not, your B2B buyers are also people, and they probably want the same. Now, most businesses can't man their websites 24/7 (unless you're shelling out for night shift employees or lots of coffee)—this is where the chatbot comes in. But there's an art to the bot—they shouldn't replace humans, but should help facilitate conversations with customers. Proper use can result in tremendous boost to lead generation, and can radically speed up a company's growth. Dave Gerhardt, co-author of Conversational Marketing and VP of Marketing at Drift, joined RTU for a chatbot chat, and really digs into the value, and ideal usage, of these automated critters. Beyond that, Dave touches on a few broader subjects, including how marketing efforts need to be rooted in empathy and humanity. After all, you'll always be marketing to people. Listen in! You'll want to hear about why businesses big and small can benefit from chatbots! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts - Stitcher - or Podsearch What You'll Learn Conversational marketing: why you should nix your lead form When Drift nixed its own lead form, they did so to teach the market about conversational marketing! Drift needed to practice what it preached. Drift utilizes bots to capture leads. Instead of a form submission, there is a conversation with a potential customer. Dave shares that a form is binary while a chatbot allows a conversation to occur. Today's technology is so good that from a single email address, your company can get ample information. Because of this, companies should feel free to focus on the conversation. Why chatbots? Chatbots work 24/7. You can get leads while you are sleeping, and no matter when a customer is on your website, they can get help. Consumers do not want to wait for information, and bots allow access to it at any time. Humans are used to instant gratification, and it has been proven that if you can respond to a new lead in 5 minutes, the chances of getting into contact with them goes up 10x. Astonishingly, over 90% of B2B companies are not replying within 5 minutes. But, a bot service can help them do just that! Your company can look to chatbots to facilitate conversations as a helper of humans. The need for empathy in sales conversations Dave defines marketing as helping people to buy, and empathy as the ability to put yourself in others' shoes. He explains that it is necessary to have empathy in good sales conversations. It changes how you approach sales by trying to understand how to best help the customer by understanding their point of view. It is a give-to-get economy, so if you want to build trust, you must give! Bots can answer questions and get information to buyers. Chatbots are a great way to give customers back their time, and time is one of the most valuable commodities. Timeline [2:40] Get to know Dave, and why he was first attracted to Drift [6:15] Information from his book, ConversationalMarketing [11:11] Is there every information on a website worth gating? [14:03] Why chatbots [20:20] Embedding a calendar-like function to a chatbot [25:20] The point of moving from a chatbot to livechat [28:16] Why speed matters! [31:37] The importance of empathy in sales conversations [35:40] Using chatbots for customer service and post sales [39:35] CQL's and why they will save the world Connect With Dave Gerhardt: Connect with Dave Gerhardt on LinkedIn Follow Dave Gerhardt on Twitter Resources & People Mentioned Book: Dave Gerhardt's Conversational Marketing Connect with Drew http://renegade.com/ On LinkedIn On Twitter On Facebook On Instagram