Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of the Exit Five Weekly email, a weekly note with B2B marketing lessons & observations, fueled by the community at Exit Five (we host a private community of ~3,500 marketing pros and you can join us at exitfive.com if you're not already a member now that we're off of Facebook and have our own site and mobile app).

Sponsored by Jasper: There's something new out this week from the team at Jasper called Jasper Campaigns that is going to be very interesting to B2B marketers. Now you can create end-to-end marketing campaigns all in one place with the power of AI. Create all of your campaign assets seamless and they will all be singing the same tune by using Jasper's Brand Voice to make sure everything sounds like your brand and ties into your brand identity. You can generate blog posts, landing page copy, promotional emails, press releases, Facebook ad copy, and more. Collaborate efficiently with your team in the same brand voice, saving time and streamlining the marketing campaign creation process. Jasper has a 7 day free trial and you can get 25% off your first 3 months of the product with the code EXITFIVE, because they are one of the presenting sponsors of Exit Five.

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The Exit Five Weekly

First, just a message from me.

HANG IN THERE!

Between Exit Five and some companies that I am involved with I can tell you that right now stress and burnout in marketing is higher than I've ever noticed in my career (so at least the last 10 years). And it makes sense as to why: the economy slumping, leads to fewer companies wanting to spend, marketing gets cut in all different areas, and we're being asked to do more with less and we're stressed / burned out / questioning what we're doing and re-visiting your career path.

Hang in there.

Almost across the board this is the case right now. With the exception of AI companies, most B2B SaaS companies are have a tough go of it. 

But maybe there's an opportunity for you to learn something new and acquire new skills during this time. Zoom out and look at your career - will you work at this one company in this one industry for the rest of your life? Probably not. So even if things aren't going great, can you take the longer term view and see what you can be learning right now? Can you think of it as you're being paid (hopefully...) to acquire new skills? Maybe you've never done a rebrand before but now you're being asked to do one one a shoestring budget. Great. Figure out how to get it done. Maybe you're selling to a new ICP and a new customer that you don't have experience writing for. Great. Maybe now you can add other layer to your depths as a writer and content creator. Maybe your boss is an absolute pain in the butt but the CEO is great and the company is in a great market. Can you learn from others around you in the company and in your industry and just ignore the PITA boss for a bit?

Take a minute to zoom out, think about your career, and see the next 6-12 months as "skills acquisition" and see where it takes you. Continue to work in your current job, but see it is they are paying you for your development and maybe that can change how you think about your day-to-day job for the time being, especially if company growth has slowed.

The role of Product Marketing in B2B SaaS (Calendly's Head of Product Marketing)

If you're in or around product marketing there's an Exit Five podcast episode for you this week.

My guest is Jeff Hardison, he runs product marketing at Calendly and we cover:

- The role product marketing plays in a B2B org
- Structuring a product marketing department
- The differences between sales-led and product-led motions
- Tips on hiring product marketers
- What product marketing looks like at Calendly

- Setting goals for product marketing, and more.

Search Exit Five podcast where you listen (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc.)

One of the things that stood out to me in this conversation with Jeff is his definition for what product marketing should do was pretty close to "it depends" -- and I completely agree. Product marketing is a rare role that touches almost every department: finance, product, engineering, demand gem, content, customer marketing, sales, etc. And at each company those variables are all going to be different. And the people on the product marketing team, who they are, where they come from, what their skills are all different too. It's almost impossible to define product marketing in one way.

Don't be so glued to industry definitions or how XYZ company does it. You have to define what the role of product marketing is at your company and then you can figure out what the goals should be ... and as Jeff wisely points out in this episode, think about how different the role of product marketing is at a sales led company vs. a product led company, or one that sells to small businesses vs. enterprise buyers.

Please join us in the new home for Exit Five (and our dedicated iOS + Android app)

We have officially moved our community off of Facebook and over to Circle which gives us our own private community on the web and a dedicated mobile app for iOS and Android. It's bumping over there already and I've been loving the feedback from members so far.

Here's a video overview from me breaking down the new Exit Five community.

You can join the community right now for free with a 7 day free trial and then choose monthly or annual billing (or to not join) after your trial.

- Dave

PS. What burning questions / topics are on your mind? 

We're putting together an AMA / mailbag episode of the Exit Five podcast and I'd love to take questions and see what's on your mind (and I can find experts to help answers them since I'm just the community moderator around here these days).

PPS. Have a good marketing meme? Tag Exit Five on LinkedIn :)

Thanks to the 2023 Exit Five presenting sponsors Jasper (AI), Demandwell (SEO), and Zapier (Automation)