Hey - it's me Dave. Back with the weekly Exit Five newsletter. Reply back or say hi on Twitter or LinkedIn, it's me. For real life! As my kids say thanks to Bluey...

One opening thought this week:

If you’re lucky enough to still have a marketing job…

This will be a great 12 months to learn (or relearn) what marketing really needs to do:

Make sales easier.

And in then in 2024 we can get back to the Yeti's and hoodies and wine and cheeses.

Over the last year the Exit Five LinkedIn page has grown past 60,000 followers but I always forget to post there. So this week I've started ramping up content there again and, hey, what do you know, followers are growing.

I'm using the page as a creative outlet to share marketing memes like this one 😂

But I'll post some substance there too every now and then ... but cmon the memes don't lie!

Here's one of the biggest mistakes I made (twice) in my career as a marketing leader.

It's not sexy, but it's true: underestimating (and underinvesting) in SEO.

It's not that I didn't understand the power of organic traffic. My favorite marketing channels (and where I have made a living) are all about content + podcast + social media, building a brand, and generating both direct traffic and organic traffic.

But for some reason I could never bite the bullet on SEO because I was under so much pressure to hit the number NOW. This month, this quarter. And SEO always felt like an "it takes time" type of invest. Which by the way it is ... and like all good things, it takes time to invest, and you reap the benefits over time. You build the well before you're thirsty. But as a marketing leader I kept re-prioritizing other things.

Multiple times the answer to "how can we be growing faster?" wasn't finding a new channel to crack or coming up with some new big product launch or campaign. It was "well, if we had invested in SEO 18 months ago, right now our baseline for organic traffic would be 30-50% higher ..."

And today I see many marketing leaders struggle with the same type of the decision. Organic isn't successfully being leverage as a demand gen channel.

Demandwell has created a calculator that can help give you a blueprint for what it will take to drive real ROI from SEO based on your current SEO performance, and real performance data from the Demandwell customer base (customers who publish 50 pieces of content on average see an increase in baseline traffic of 3x)

Want to learn more about SEO and how content can be driving revenue for you right now?

Get a free SEO ROI consultation now (and don't make the same mistakes with SEO that I did!)

I know a lot of people are thinking about how to do more / get more with less right now and this is one of the channels that might be start to be placing a bet on if you haven't.

Don't be like me. Invest in SEO.

Maybe I would still have my hair.

New Podcast: Jimmy Daly, Founder, Superpath

PS. THANKS FOR ALL THE NEW LISTENERS. 25 days into January and we've already had 2X the amount of downloads than we've had in any full month ever! SHOW THAT TO THE CFO! Appreciate you continuing to listen and spread the word.

Wait. I am the CFO .... 

The Exit Five Job Board: A dedicated resource for B2B Marketing Jobs (100% free to post your jobs)

If you are hiring right now, please add open marketing roles to the Exit Five job board this week (it's free).

The Exit Five job board reaches ~4,000 B2B marketing candidates each month and it's a great place to get more eyeballs on your open roles (or to browse if you're reading this and looking for something new).

Learn more at jobs.exitfive.com.

It is 100% free for any reader + company to post an open marketing job to the board.

Here's the hoping companies begin hiring again in Q1 2023.

Popular Discussions in the Community This Week

Where should BDRs sit? Sales or marketing?

 Thoughts on BDRs/SDRs sitting under the Marketing team instead of Sales?

- Our company revenue is about 65% inbound, 35% outbound, but BDRs sit under Sales and spend the majority of their time cold calling.
About half our BDRs are purely outbound, the other half receive a few leads each day but also do outbound.
- Opps created from inbound are 5x more likely to convert to sale, but the majority of the volume and time is spent on these outbound opportunities.
- We are considering moving BDRs under myself in the marketing team. It seems to make sense based on the above, but it would be my first time managing a motion like that.

Thoughts? Anyone else in a similar situation?

Website CTA: Demo or Let's Talk?

 I am considering changing the main CTA on our website from “Request a Demo” to “Let’s Talk."

We are a B2B SaaS company with an average deal size of $8k and trying to move upmarket.

Has anyone seen a higher conversion rate by changing the CTA from request a demo to something else?

AMA: John Short AMA on Demand Gen

 Do you have questions about what demand gen should do it, how it should be measured, where it should sit, and how it differs (or does it?) from all the other areas?

My friend John Short is back this week for an AMA inside of Exit Five on all things B2B SaaS FULL FUNNEL marketing. That's right, no part of the funnel can be left out in 2023 if you're trying to drive revenue --> and driving predictable demand is what John talks about most.

This is an example of the type of conversations and questions that happen in the Exit five community every week. If you're already a member, just hop into the Facebook Group and click on the "Discussion" tab or explore the search bar for two years of posts covering everything you can imagine in B2B marketing.

If you're not a member, we'd love to have you join us. There are 3,300+ B2B marketing pros in the Exit Five community. Thousands of B2B marketers jump into the Exit Five Community daily to share tactical advice, give and receive feedback, and exchange ideas about what’s working in marketing today.

You can try it 100% risk free for 30 days - I am true to my word. If you join, don't get value from it, you can email us within the first 30 days and we send a refund no questions asked.

Thanks To Our 2023 Presenting Sponsors

All B2B marketers have the skills to drive leads, opps, and revenue with SEO. You just need the right tool to do it. Learn how you can optimize and scale your SEO workflow now with Demandwell at demandwell.com/exit-five

Jasper is the AI Content Generator that helps you and your team break through creative blocks to create amazing, original content 10X faster. Learn more + start using AI to create content for free at jasper.ai

Zapier empowers anyone to automate their work across 5,000+ apps, so that every person and business can move forward at growth speed. We power over 2.2 million businesses, from startups to Fortune 100, and we’ve been doing it for over a decade. Learn more + get started for free at zapier.com

PS. Can I get your help sharing this newsletter?

Word of mouth is always going to be the best marketing channel and I'd love to get your help spreading the word about this newsletter. Just click here and you can edit + copy this text and write your own for LinkedIn or Twitter.