Cari Murray

So much of your strategy relies on the communication of it It’s why we are making proactive efforts to make our naming of things memorable Your internal comms is equally as important as external ⬇️ Like these playbooks ⬇️ 👻 Ghostbusters: A playbook to nurture someone when they ghost a BDR or sales rep or no show a meeting 💨 Need for Speed: A playbook to create velocity in the funnel so things that took 30 days take 10-15 days 🫣 commitment issues: A playbook to drive bottom of funnel engagement for those that aren’t ready for a 1-on-1 demo 👀 Let’s get creepy: a playbook using intent signals and personalization to catch people’s attention Just a few we created 😊 You know what people remember most? The names. You know what they won’t remember? All the details of what it does and even the value it brings to them. Mix the names with some fun gifs and you have a fun, somewhat entertaining way, to help people know your strategy without being proficient in your respective area. It’s often the little things that go a long ways

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I could talk about product positioning all day. Good product positioning makes it easy for buyers to see themselves, their routines, and their goals reflected in what you're offering them. Sometimes it's shifting your product positioning from "what we do" to "what we do for you". What a dream getting to meet and talk with Daniel Murray of The Marketing Millennials podcast about: ➡ Creating product positioning that resonates (and how we think about it at Recharge ➡ Sustaining brands in the routine economy ➡ Why your first marketing hire should be a product marketer, and more Check out the full episode ✨

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Completely agree. "Instead of relying on outdated lead generation tactics like cold-calling, heavy digital advertising, gated content and hidden pricing, firms must focus on engaging potential customers through genuine educational content, transparency and strategic nurturing that aligns with the buyers’ actual journey and creates a better experience. Such engagement is more likely to cultivate interest and trust in a company, reflecting an understanding of the B2B buyer’s challenges and how the solution can address them. And it is more likely to lead to meaningful conversions, faster sales cycles and higher win rates."

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Realllly smart analysis from Axios' Eleanor Hawkins on the power of internal comms in 2024. With tough sledding ahead for so many this year, the savviest C-Suite leaders are partnering up with Comms to communicate deeply, regularly and authentically about core values and value delivered rather than handwringing over how and when to take a public stance on hot-button issues. Investing in robust internal comms leads to stronger employee engagement, which makes for better recruitment and retention. And ultimately, that gives leaders a competitive edge. 💪 #StrategicCommunications #CCO #InternalCommunications #PRandComms #CSuite

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In today's rapidly evolving environment, a fresh perspective is needed for demand generation. What worked 5 years ago clearly doesn't deliver the same ROI today. Love the perspective Ed Locher. You've always been a demand gen wizzard. Here’s a model based on the 4 C’s: Curate, Capture, Convert, Compound, each crucial for creating an effective revenue generation engine:

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How are we supposed to grow when it's so quiet around here? A comment to that effect was posted in The Digital Experience (DX) Community slack the other day. I shared my thoughts on how marketing can help there and figured my thoughts would be valuable outside that community for martech in general, so here you go. These days, budgets are tight and people are risk-averse. Layer that on top of the fact that buyers for "marketingOS" tech (website, marketing automation, CRM, etc.) are really only in the market every 3 years at best, and often longer. I'm no chef, but that seems like a recipe for challenging growth. You can't change the outside factors, so here's what you can work on to maximize profitable growth. 1. Don't forget brand If people are rarely in-market and the signals only appear later in the process, you need to be top of mind to enter that shortlist. Actions: use audience research tools to find out where your audience is and what they're talking about, have internal SMEs post unique content (quality > quantity), ID partnerships for creating content or accessing audiences, reevaluate display channels/advertorial opportunities Results: Increasing inbound/organic demo requests/trials/opportunities 2. Focus on customer success Churn is a killer while renewal and expansion dollars are a lot easier than net-new. Understand what your customers see as "value" and help them realize that early and often. Actions: Join CS calls (or analyze data) to understand pain points and opportunities. Create content that extends your CS team's capability to reach accounts. Segment new feature campaigns based on value triggers per account. Results: Lower volume of at-risk accounts, reduced churn, higher expansion pipeline. 3. Optimize handoffs When fewer people are in-market, you have to handle them with kid gloves. Actions: Plug any leaks at handoff points (forms -> MA -> CRM -> SDR -> AE -> CS), lock down SLAs at each stage, ensure content underpromises so you can over-deliver (e.g. form promises a 24 hour response when your SLA is 4 hours) Results: Increased conversion rates deeper in the funnel This isn't magic sauce. None of this will generate outsize results on its own, but they absolutely are blockers that will kill whatever marketing momentum you do have. PS: Added thought that came to me while writing this. Leadership will be desperate to push more leads through your process. Understand which signals you have. Intent to learn is not intent to buy. If you overwhelm your process with leads that are not actually in-market, you'll be taking attention away from leads that are.

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Does your CEO really want to know how many MQLs and SQLs your marketing produced this month? Probably not. Today's marketing playbook vastly differs from the one that worked so well two years ago, including what gets reported internally. I was recently invited to speak to the Arizona Innovation Marketing Association, and I chose to discuss how my marketing playbook has changed. In my talk, which I titled, "The Rebellion of ROI: Why It's Time to Throw Out Traditional Marketing Playbooks," I shared five game-changing shifts forcing a complete rethink of the playbooks we used two, even five years ago. And the first big shift is to admit your CEO doesn't care about MQL's or SQL's. I call it a shift because they used to care about them. Not that long ago, marketing teams were being told Sales needs more "top of funnel LEADS." So Marketers created a bunch of gated assets and threw a gazillion "Marketing-Qualified Leads" over the wall to Sales. Except they quickly learned that someone downloading an eBook is almost never ready to book a sales demo. And in the end, while Marketing could claim success by generating thousands of leads, CEO's and CFO's were focused on driving revenue, not leads. This led to questions like "so how many leads do we need to produce $X in revenue?" In Q2 of last year, I stopped reporting lead numbers. The traditional "MQL" was simply too disconnected from revenue. At the same time, we also took the radical step of ungating all of our assets, which naturally caused our lead count to plunge. Instead, I shifted to reporting inbound pipeline and outbound pipeline produced through marketing outreach efforts (our SDR sits in Marketing, not Sales). The only leading indicator we report is inbound demo requests. Guess what? I've not been asked for MQL or SQL counts in more than a year. The reality is investors are no longer funding growth without profitability, so aligning our marketing efforts to revenue helped prove that our modest marketing investments are producing pipeline. Reporting on pipeline also enables us to report Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) tied to pipeline and revenue (10X and 29X respectively for last year). How has your marketing reporting changed in the last two years?

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Right now the lead form my team is using to capture leads has an 80% drop off rate - and I couldn't be more thrilled. 😊 Drop offs are usually considered bad. So why does this big number spark Marie Kondo levels of joy for me? Much like for Marie, in the world of B2B leads, less is often more. A few months ago our marketing and sales team were swimming in a sea of thousands of leads a week, but we had so little information about them that it was impossible to prioritize them accurately and handle them with the speed and attention they required. It was only after we had calls with our leads that we would find out many were completely irrelevant. So we launched a new form and we did a couple of things that to some may have been controversial but that have had astounding results. 1. We made the form longer - we went from a single step form to a multistep form that asked twice the number of questions as the original. This gave us way more insight on the intent and product fit of the leads for our Enterprise solution. 2. We added very specific answer choices to our questions - we did that to show our leads through that specificity that they are in the right place. We will continue to iterate on this experiment, and I can't wait to see what else we can do to optimize this funnel and experience the life changing magic 🧝‍♀️ of tidying it up.

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WOMEN TAKE CHARGE. No. Literally. We’re excited to see a jam-packed Charge: The Revenue Summit schedule highlighting fierce women in revenue. Join us to learn from these trailblazers on how to stop revenue leak, design and run proper revenue cadences, and develop a robust AI strategy to capture more revenue. You’ll hear from powerhouses like: - Rachel Roberts (CRO, AppDynamics) - Jaclyn Spillane (Director of Innovation PMO, Genesys) - Sonal Puri (VP of Global Business Operations, Checkpoint) - Michelle MiJung Kim (Director Sales Strategy & Ops, Zendesk) - Molly Greenberg (Head of GTM Transformation, Asana)  - and more! RSVP to answer the most critical question in revenue: Will you meet, beat or miss on revenue? Grab your seat here: https://lnkd.in/g2t7n5A4

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You are so right Jon Miller: Branding is what differentiates and helps your company become "a trusted advisor, not just a vendor." Your competitors "can't replicate the feeling of belonging to a passionate community or the trust built through thought leadership." Market Presence + Brand Strength + Pipeline Health = Market Leadership. Elevate marketing performance: https://bit.ly/3VQTEGo

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GOOD AMERICAN switched PostPilot to because they needed a full funnel direct mail solution that could deliver strong results. It had to be easy to use and easy to scale. We started by helping their team A/B test winback postcards, and once there was a clear winner, they expanded into a full programmatic retention program. Now, whenever a customer hits certain RFM parameters (e.g., last purchased 60 days ago, bought 3+ times, spent $100+), we automatically fire off a personalized postcard. Those programmatic postcards are driving an 8x+ ROI and $1.40 in incremental revenue per recipient. That's incremental revenue, automated. Now, they're testing a lookalike prospecting campaign using our proprietary data to drive cost-efficient new customer acquisition. Spoiler -- it's off to a more than good start. Full case study in the comments.

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I've been thinking a lot about the role of the marketer and how it's evolving, so it was super validating to attend this week's ANA conference and hear a speaker share... "Marketers are like a Swiss Army Knife, they're expected to achieve in all sorts of areas of a business." Wow! There's nothing like attending a session in person and having someone put words to your ideas. 💡 Thanks for the inspiration on this topic and many others, and for Moira Vetter, Modo Modo Agency, Metro Atlanta Chamber and Association of National Advertisers for throwing an inspiring event. #atlanta #b2bmarketing #atlantamarketing

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Some great call outs from Jerry Daykin this morning. Two points to highlight: 1) Embrace do-not-block lists and 2) Do not block the news Opt-in to great quality content (including journalism and diverse voices) that reflects your values & principles, and make sure those opt-ins override any brand safety controls & exclusions you have https://lnkd.in/eu6Xx85A

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Making the Case for a Fractional Head of Content These are tough times for enterprise technology startups. B2B tech startups are having to tighten their belts, lay off excess staff, and cut out all the extras. Is your marketing team running lean and mean this year? In these days of tight budgets and tighter headcount, the one thing that should not be sacrificed is your Content Marketing strategy. If you are a bit too light in your content creation, consider engaging a fractional Head of Content as an affordable way to raise your content game. Fractional execs are now a widely accepted way to bring senior-level experience on board without the full-time cost. A fractional Head of Content fills many roles: 1. Expert consultant – can drive the effort to codify sales personas, buyer’s journey(s), key messaging, and more – facilitating the entire process with all stakeholders 2. Advisor to the CMO – elevates content marketing to an equal function and peer with demand generation, product marketing, investor relations, and communications 3. Seasoned storyteller – lends a “been there/done that” perspective when planning content strategies and tactics that are sure to convert prospects faster 4. Brand strategist – can speak the language of creative directors and designers to elevate your brand’s singular voice 5. Executive editor – thinks like a publisher, not like a managing editor, and so talks to C-level management, the board, industry analysts, and sales execs with equal aplomb 6. Production chief – makes the trains run on time, but also knows how to scale your content operation globally 7. Project / Team leader – understands how to mentor and develop all your content creators, efficiently manage your agencies, and get the best work out of everyone 8. Performance analyst – knows how to track and grow both content consumption and engagement over time, and which metrics really matter 9. Writer / Creator – at the most tactical level, every Head of Content should be able to “walk the walk” 10. Professional networker – senior-level consultants thrive because of their network, so you get the benefit of their connections to resources and vendors that aid rapid execution The right fractional Head of Content will bring a wealth of experience, a proven methodology, and a track record of success. Most are self-starters that can hit the ground running. Many arrive pre-armed with insights, strategies, plans and tools that slash on-boarding time and accelerate their learning curve. Want to know more? Reach out to me on LinkedIn or simply comment to start a dialogue.  #contentmarketing #content #contentwriting #CMO

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Recurring meetings can be a sneaky expensive cost to a business. Getting X people in a zoom once a week can easily cost you a day or more of people time, that could be spent working productively. Stack a few of these together and you've lost significant time that could be spent doing the work vs talking about the work. Unfortunately, over the years I've done a fairly poor job of leading recurring team meetings in the past. Not enough structure, not enough planning ahead, feeling the need to take up the dead space because I'm the team lead. Probably plenty of other mistakes. Recently I've been inspired by some of the leaders at Postscript by how they organize their recurring meetings. It's simple and democratizes the meeting. Open up a Google Doc, put the date at the top then 3 - 4 sections: 1) Wins 2) Blockers 3) FYI 4) Agenda Topics Then ask the team to fill these out beforehand. This gives a simple structure for everyone to follow and shares the burden of "what should we talk about this week" without putting people on the spot in the moment. I'm slightly embarrassed that its taken me this long to do something as simple as this to help make my weekly team meetings more inclusive and productive, but better late than never. What has worked for you, I need to keep improving this muscle.

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I’ve gotten 8 inbounds from CMOs in the last week. What are they asking me for? …… Content help “Do you have a really good content writer you’d recommend?” “I need to create so much content this quarter I need some extra help” I’m going to venture and say scaling content production (volume and speed) is one of the top priorities CMOs are grappling with! 💡 (Myself included 🙋🏻) #content #marketing

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This resonates with me having been on every step of the chain. Stressing that your team engages with all other contacts in the planning process from a place of empathy is just so important. Taking the little extra time to ensure that everyone is clear on the ask, that the process and timeline allow for an effective proposal, and that the level of detail required is necessary or valuable will both generate better responses and create actual partnerships rather than tenuous transactions built on shaky foundations.

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<rant alert :> I'm tired of this digital echo chamber! This year, with wars and other hot topics around the globe, I noticed my social media feeds kept showing me the same type of posts. It’s not new to me (as a marketing technologist I understand and leverage these algorithms), but this year it's even worse. Every time I logged into Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, it was the same stream of familiar opinions—comforting but limiting. I recently read this paper, "Algorithm-mediated social learning in online social networks," by researchers from US universities. It explains how these algorithms exploit our social-learning biases, narrowing our perspectives and potentially leading to social misperceptions and conflicts. We are scrolling through endless posts about a contentious issue but only seeing one side of the argument. It’s frustrating and also dangerous. We miss out on the full picture, diverse opinions, and the chance to grow. I am trying to break out of this cycle, I consciously seek out different viewpoints and follow diverse accounts. I make an effort to explore new topics, engage with content outside my usual interests, and actively look for tools that promote a wider range of content. Btw, any developers or entrepreneurs out there working on this? I’m happy to look into it and support implementation and funding. Cheers! </rant over>

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