Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of The Five, a weekly collection of B2B marketing lessons, learnings, thoughts… ok fine it’s stuff. B2B marketing stuff. Curated by me, Dave Gerhardt and driven by the community at Exit Five (we host a private community of ~3,500 marketing pros and normally I'm here promoting that you should join us but right now we're not taking new memberships for a few weeks as we do some housekeeping, but you can get on the waiting list if you want to be notified when we open memberships back up in May)
Thanks to the 2023 Exit Five presenting sponsors Jasper (AI), Demandwell (SEO), and Zapier (Automation).
Let’s get into it.
#1 Join 650 Marketers for Therapy on Friday (Exit Five Live)
Click here to register and also get your name on the list to get the recording after.
Layoffs, budget cuts, slower sales cycles, and a lack of urgency to buy your product right now. That's become normal in B2B SaaS over the last two quarters. But what does it mean for marketer? Do nothing? Just play defense? Yeah right. Marketers are being asked to do more with less, and if you're one of those marketers this is a session you don't want to miss.
FRIDAY we’re hosting an Exit Five Live session that will be like therapy if you’re in the thick of it right now. We'll talk to three marketing leaders about what they are doing to drive sustainable growth for their companies under less (cough) favorable conditions. We’ll discuss what’s changed for them in the past year, and how they’ve adapted their strategies and tactics to adjust to the existing market climate. We’re being asked to do more (than ever) with less (than ever), and this session will cover how these marketers have adapted and risen to the challenge.
Click here to register for this session -- *this will also make sure your name is on the list to get the recording even if you can’t make it live.
#2 This CEO Crushes It On LinkedIn
LinkedIn is (hands down) one of the best channels for organic marketing for B2B brands. I've been posting content on LinkedIn for ~7 years now and I've lost count of the business opportunities and revenue it has helped me generate. Heck I even wrote a book on this topic called Founder Brand. And in the Exit Five community we're often asked for examples of founders / CEOs who are doing a great job with content on LinkedIn. Allison Whalen is Founder & CEO of Parentaly and she's grown her business into the seven figure ARR range almost entirely through LinkedIn.
She's my guest on this week's podcast (episode 70) you can go and listen everywhere you get your podcasts.
#3 Where Does Product Marketing Sit In Your Org?
Chilipiper Founder & CMO Alina Vandenberghe was in the Exit Five community this week asking an interesting question:
How does the community here defines Product Marketing vs GTM roles ?
Product Marketing is always an interesting role inside of B2B SaaS because of how many departments it touches. I've seen it live in marketing or in product depending on the company.
My perspective was this:
Most CMOs I talk to have product marketing under marketing. It’s part of GTM. And product marketing owns positioning, messaging, ICP definition, sales enablement, and is measured by win rates.
Chris Higgins had this to say:
Product marketing function varies enormously between companies. In some companies, product marketing owns the targets and GTM for their product and works with marketing and sales teams to execute. In other companies, product marketing creates specialised marketing materials and strategies for a product, but doesn't own any business goals. Finally there is always some team performing each function, just depends how the company names each team.
Ed Porter added:
I can see product marketing as part of GTM. I see product belonging to engineering, but I don't see that work the best. Possibly until scale is reached, but I see more alignment with GTM than with engineering/dev.
Danielle Killgore Hobson wrote:
Product marketing brings products to market - it can involve everything from pricing, packaging, competitor battle cards, sales enablement in the form of playbooks, one pagers, etc. Depending on the org, product marketers often help drive product roadmap and releases. PMs can lead demos, be involved in RFPs, it all depends on the company. But when I’ve been in that role I’ve been accountable for all of the above. The best product marketing alignment IMO is under a product leadership umbrella.
Where does product marketing live in your org?
#4 Marketing to Marketing Leader - What's The Difference?
There's a big difference between being an individual contributor in marketing and being the marketing leader, and it's something we get a lot of questions about so this week we asked the community and those who have grown from marketer to marketing leader (VP, CMO) how they would explain it.
Here are some of the best answers:
- Your work is the team's work. "The best advice I got when I went from IC to Manager to VP was "your work is no longer the work you produce...it's now the work your team produces." It probably took me a few years to really appreciate it, but think about it often. You need to set your team up for success and great things happen."
- Lead, don't do. "The team HAS to own the ideas and the efforts and the wins...they're NOT your ideas, even if you're the one who came up with them."
- Own your metrics. "Having total command of your numbers/ ability to forecast, and strategising in alignment with long term business objectives."
- One channel to all channels. "Biggest difference: you go from owning a lot of small numbers to owning a lot of big numbers. It’s no longer one or two channels, but all channels and opex."
#5 Exit Five 2.0 Is Coming
I shared a long-ish update about the future of Exit Five with the community this week and thought it would be good to share here, even if it's long copy ... maybe if it's interesting you'll read it anyway? :) I can't wait to show everyone Exit Five 2.0 in a few weeks...
Here's what I wrote in the community this week, slightly modified to be more relevant to the readers here, so here's a call out of some of things I am most excited about:
- Dave
PS. Could you share this email with a friend? I wrote a tweet / social post you can use or edit.