Katie Bevilacqua is the Director of Operations at ConexEd, a higher ed edtech startup that migrated from Salesforce to HubSpot. Her and the team are investing in increasingly sophisticated marketing to take their product to market.

Laying the right foundation is just the start. Once the finishing migrating from Salesforce to HubSpot, the work began in earnest to see what's working and try new things.

We talk about topics like customer journey mapping, lead attribution, and how their B2B marketing efforts are really distinct from what you'd see in a more conventional B2C organization.

Jump ahead:

• (00:00) - Intro
• (00:28) - Switching from Salesforce to HubSpot
• (03:11) - Measuring ROI in HubSpot
• (05:04) - Being strategic as a marketer
• (07:02) - Managing longer sales cycles
• (10:25) - Follow Katie Bevilacqua
• (10:38) - Outro

Find Katie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katelynbevilacqua/
Find ConexEd online: https://conexed.com/

Brandon Kim is the VP of Marketing at Crystal, a powerful personality data platform that sales and marketing teams are using to increase sales. It works by understanding your prospects better, primarily with the DISC assessment.

Brandon shares how they believe more personalized communication is the future. Whether that's one-to-one conversations, multi-stakeholder B2B deals, or any number of other use cases for the product.

Noteworthy topics include Myers-Briggs, DISC, Enneagram, adaptive selling, and how the Crystal LinkedIn extension and free assessment tools can help people get a sense of how the product works.

Find Brandon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-kim-39aaa529/
Find Crystal online: https://www.crystalknows.com/

Skip ahead:

• (00:00) - Intro
• (00:28) - What is adaptive selling?
• (01:51) - Personality assessments
• (04:31) - Value for sales
• (05:28) - How Crystal works
• (09:10) - Uses outside of sales
• (10:04) - Applying to ABM
• (12:08) - Follow Brandon Kim
• (12:45) - Outro

Aiden Technologies is a fast-growing IT automation platform that serves large enterprise companies. Aaron joins to talk about his enterprise sales and go to market strategy as the first marketing hire.

Topics include marketing with HubSpot, cold outreach, sales-marketing alignment, and more.

Aaron also talks in detail about how Aiden's sales team is structured, working with SDRs and sales reps, and sales automation.

Jump ahead with the following chapter markers:

• (00:00) - Enterprise sales strategy with Aaron Mellman at Aiden Technologies
• (00:28) - Enterprise sales strategy
• (04:17) - Marketing with HubSpot
• (07:00) - Sales-marketing alignment
• (08:07) - Cold outreach
• (12:57) - Positioning
• (14:38) - Follow Aaron Mellman
• (15:26) - Outro

Pete DeOlympio just implemented inbound marketing at a professional services firm with over 100 employees as the first full-time marketing hire. He shares how it's gone and what's next.

He talks about how he hit the ground running, identified early wins, and is moving forward with more advanced tactics like account-based marketing (ABM) as well as customer storytelling through case studies.

Pete also talks about how he works with his counterpart in sales, how channel sales fit into their strategy, and what he did immediately to level up the brand's website and social presence.

Jump ahead with the following chapter markers:

• (00:00) - Intro
• (00:28) - Getting recruited
• (01:44) - Establishing an inbound function
• (02:16) - What's working in inbound
• (04:05) - Working with sales
• (05:10) - Lead generation
• (06:00) - Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
• (07:22) - Intent-based data
• (08:24) - Steady growth
• (10:03) - Follow Pete DeOlympio
• (11:05) - Outro

Connie Lund is a marketer who espouses the benefits of community-led growth marketing, driving 4x ROI on campaigns and filling the sales funnel for her sales team.

She talks about specific webinars, events, and other tactics she has used, and compares/contrasts them with more conventional marketing tactics.

Connie outlines how B2B marketers can apply these tactics and set their sales teams up for success.

Jump ahead with the following chapter markers:

• (00:00) - Intro
• (00:28) - Marketing as community building
• (03:16) - Valuable marketing spend
• (04:14) - Sales with PLG
• (06:27) - Community in the sales funnel
• (09:20) - Organic vs SDRs
• (11:09) - Marketing in a silo
• (12:49) - Outro

Ryan Paul Gibson is the founder of content lift. Ryan explains how customer research can drive sales, how to make the case for marketing budget, and how to do customer research interviews that don't suck.

He has worn business development hats, works alongside demand gen marketers, and really understands what it's like for organizations that are navigating uncertain times right now.

Ryan also contextualizes this type of work and shares examples like The Mom Test by entrepreneur and writer Rob Fitzpatrick.

Jump ahead with the following chapter markers:

• (00:00) - Intro
• (00:28) - De-risking marketing
• (01:27) - Arguing for your budget
• (03:12) - Aligning with sales
• (05:18) - Customer research
• (08:39) - Beyond personas
• (10:39) - Research amidst uncertainty
• (13:16) - Outro

Ashley Guttuso is a Chief Strategy Officer. She joins us to talk about how to do effective content marketing that helps sales teams be successful.

Her overview on content marketing is an important starting point for the conversation. Flagging where a lot of teams get started on the wrong foot. And considering what Google is really looking for these days when it comes to SEO.

Then she introduces the serving vs. selling framework and how this can be applied to product and content marketing. Ashley includes a detailed approach for ensuring that you're always talking to customers to better identify, understand, and resonate with your ICP.

Jump ahead with the following chapter markers:

• (00:00) - Int ro
• (00:28) - Content worth creating
• (04:38) - Content that serves
• (06:23) - Connecting content with sales
• (07:54) - Talking to customers
• (11:15) - Messaging to your ICP
• (14:44) - Outro

Learn more about Audience Ops: https://audienceops.com/

First, thanks so much for your support. We've seen a lot of success since switching to this new short format, interview-style show in August. Thank you helping spread the word.

Second, we're going to be adding video in February. We are going to finish a queue of audio-only episodes over the next few weeks. And then in February we will start publishing video interviews on YouTube.

As part of this transition, we will be going back to one episode per week and supplementing with more tutorial and walkthrough content that will also be published on YouTube.

If you have any feedback, please email podcast@introcrm.com or find Harris Kenny on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/harriskenny

Jump ahead with the following chapter markers:

• (00:00) - Pipeline Meeting Intro
• (00:28) - Show update
• (02:49) - Pipeline Meeting Outro