Category: Show Notes

Renegade Thinkers Unite has moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published.

The challenges of 2020 have set the stage for big changes in 2021 (and beyond). For optimistic marketers, this means that 2020 is the fertilizer for a beautiful 2021, but it’s going to take a progressive, agile, and strategic mindset to reap the rewards. To discuss upcoming changes in the way that buyers buy and sellers sell in the context of marketing, Brent Adamson, distinguished VP at Gartner, joins Drew for his fourth episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite.

Joined by a live audience, Brent answers questions about how CMOs can plan for 2021, positing that marketers shouldn’t necessarily be focused on creating high-quality content. Instead, marketers should be brokers of information and experiences, building the confidence of their customers and prospects by coaching them through a world overwhelmed by thought leadership. Be sure to tune in to this productively disruptive episode—it might just change the way you think about marketing for the better.

Today’s guest CMO audience: Dux Raymond Sy (AvePoint), Mandy Dhaliwal (Dell Boomi), Dan Marks (previously of Hancock Whitney, now Infusion), Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek (Skillsoft), and Simon Schaffer-Goldman (Case Paper).

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How to enable buyer confidence
• Why customer engagement is about sensemaking
• Brent’s predictions for the future of marketing

For full show notes and interview: https://bit.ly/3hXTA0s

Renegade Thinkers Unite has moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published.

Businesses need marketing now more than ever if they want to drive top line growth. Why? Because marketers know how to do more with less. Despite budget cuts and the shift to virtual-only communications, marketers still know how to motivate employees, generate quality leads for sales teams, and gather customer feedback to influence product. As Drew says, “Marketing to the rescue. This is your moment.”

Enter CMO Katie Risch of Centro, a global software provider for digital advertisers that has grown from 3 employees to 700 in 15 years. In this episode, Katie shares how the marketing team at Centro has played a crucial role during COVID—enabling the sales team via high-quality content and enabling the product team to develop a companion product for the platform. As one of the original 3 employees at Centro, Katie also shares her unique path to the CMO role, one that has made her a dynamic leader who really understands what it means to align teams to work towards the company vision. You don’t want to miss it!

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How Centro’s marketing team developed new product during COVID
• How educational content and research can engage customers
• Why a CMO doesn’t need a marketing background to be successful

For full show notes and interview: https://bit.ly/3c7NJ7n

Renegade Thinkers Unite has moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to: Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published.

It’s not easy to create your own category. It takes vision, it takes competition, and it requires the analysts’ blessings. But, if done right, category creation can differentiate your business in a big way. B2B brands that establish a new category often become the household names of said category—visionary thought leaders who are tuned into ever-evolving customer needs. 

CMO Scott Brazina joins us in this episode to discuss how he’s helped create not just one, but two categories during his career. First at PTC with the product lifestyle management category (PLM) and now at Impact with partnership automation. Be sure to tune in for incredible insights into when it’s time for category creation, how to know it’s working, and how to continue standing out when competitors begin to follow your lead.    

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• When a business should consider creating a new category 
• How PTC and Impact created PLM and Partnership Automation categories
• How to measure a new category’s success

For full show notes and interview: https://bit.ly/3lKWEA7

Renegade Thinkers Unite has moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to: Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published.

At the beginning of 2020, Pluralsight decided it was going to give away all of its online tech courses for an entire month. The education company knew that this might negatively affect revenue, but that was a risk worth taking. After all, unemployment numbers were soaring and non-essential workers had to stay at home—this was an ideal time to learn some new skills and level up.

Pluralsight’s offering came to be known as #FreeApril, and so far it’s yielded remarkable results. 1.1 million users took advantage of the offer in markets around the world, and it didn’t cannibalize sales either. In fact, it’s helped close deals in unexpected ways and helped Pluralsight fulfill its altruistic mission: To democratize tech skills across the globe. In this episode, CMO Heather Zynczak shares how they did it, how they plan to nurture these new seeds, and why abundant generosity is the way to go. Check it out!

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How abundant generosity can yield abundant B2B sales leads
• Why #FreeApril was a mission-driven initiative
• How Pluralsight is nurturing 1.1 million #FreeApril users

 

Renegade Thinkers Unite has moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to: Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published.

In case you haven’t heard, it’s time to rev up your demand generation tactics. With budgets cut and in-person lead nurturing opportunities out of the picture, it’s up to marketers to put the pedal to the metal and show their CEOs and CFOs the return of marketing investment in hard dollars i.e. closed sales from marketing-generated leads.

In this episode, we’re joined by Kevin Fliess, a veteran CMO in SaaS and enterprise software who knows a thing or two about how to build an enduring demand generation engine that runs efficiently and effectively. He’s worked for SAP, Cvent, Cofense, and is currently CMO of Altum. His comprehensive insights cover everything from simple messaging to frictionless free trials to lead scoring models—as well as his take on why the brand purpose work Cofense did with Renegade last year was crucial to their COVID response.

Renegade Thinkers Unite has moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to: Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published.

With 25 years in the tech industry, Conversica CMO Rashmi Vittal knows a thing or two about sales and marketing alignment. She knows that it’s about “company-wide enablement” as opposed to “sales enablement.” She knows the value of a simplified product message. And she knows the common excuse, “Well, I gave leads to sales and they just didn’t do anything with them,” just won’t cut it.

In this week’s episode, Drew and Rashmi discuss her nine-square “Alignment Between Sales and Marketing” grid. It’s a simple yet thorough model, one that recognizes that achieving alignment is about constant evolution and clear communication. Be sure to tune in to hear how Conversica applies this grid in action, as well as how they’ve pivoted in 2020.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How Conversica aligns sales and marketing
• How to simply your product messaging
• Why company-wide alignment is a continuous evolution