This episode features an interview with Tom Wentworth, CMO at Recorded Future, the world’s largest threat intelligence company, working with over 1,600 businesses and government organizations across more than 74 countries.

In this episode, Tom talks about building Recorded Future News, a separate P&L that has become one of the largest cyber intelligence news sites, and a trusted media entity that breaks important news in the cybersecurity/intelligence world.

Key Takeaways:

• Brand building is not just about creating awareness, it is about building trust and building relationships.
• Sometimes, the only information you need to determine ROI is whether your clients and prospects feel your initiative provides them with value.
• A quick way to fail as a CMO is to run someone else’s playbook. Make sure that you understand the current company and context; create a bespoke plan.

Quote: “If you think about brand building, what most people do in cyber security, when they get to be Recorded Future size, we're about over 300 million in ARR, which makes us a pretty good sized company. What most companies our size do, is they go buy an F1 sponsorship, or they go put their logo on some sports team's jersey. And that's cool. That's a cool way to get in front of people, but I don't think it builds trust. Like, why would I trust this vendor just because their logo is on a jersey or their logo is on a car? That just tells me they’ve got a lot of money to spend. So we said, instead of going to do that, the way that we're going to build awareness for Recorded Future and build a relationship with our audience is through news and then through a podcast, which I'll talk about a little bit too. So that's our brand awareness investment. We feel very confident that people who fall in love with our news are also going to like our product. I don't have to prove it, in the sense that I don't have to have this super complicated attribution scheme. We just ask our clients and our prospects, ‘Hey, do you like Recorded Future News?’ And they love it. That's just about enough for us.”

Episode Timestamps:
*(04:22) The Trust Tree: Becoming a fan of account-based marketing

*(25:34) The Playbook: Building Recorded Future News

*(43:45) Quick Hits: Tom’s quick Hits

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Tom on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Recorded Future
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

In this episode, Eric shares with us how to effectively tailor marketing messaging, why it’s important to push the boundaries of content design, and leveraging tools like ChatGPT for brainstorming ideas. Eric also talks about why fighting pieces of collateral to get to the point is often done in vain and his approach to creating better content.

Key Takeaways:

• Balance products and personas: You need to adeptly balance different products, verticals, and personas to create a cohesive marketing strategy. Segmenting your audience based on their product install base allows you to tailor your messaging and approach more effectively, fostering stronger connections and driving better results.
• Be innovative with design: Emphasize innovative and boundary-pushing design in your content. Think of new ways to deliver your message and make your content stand out from the competition. Creativity in design can significantly enhance your brand's appeal and memorability.
• AI is a tool - use it: Use tools like Chat GPT for brainstorming ideas. AI can help you generate creative concepts and refine your strategies, making your campaigns more dynamic and innovative.

Quote:

• “I think the design is so important, and as someone who, I run the marketing team here, I'm personally probably on a lot of sales lists and distributions. I get hit up constantly by SDRs who are sending me things. If it doesn't look good, I'm not going to open it. I don't really care what it is. Like I'm so busy drifting between emails and Slacks and meetings. And then, my personal life as well, that if it's not designed in a compelling, intuitive way, I'm not going to fight with a piece of collateral to get to the point. And so I think we have really tripled down on brand, visual identity, how the different pieces of our story come together…But when you're getting into thought leadership, I think the era of attaching a PDF or a static white paper, one pager, like those are so long gone. And I think in an industry that is a bit old school as well, I think standing out as a more dynamic marketing function where we're putting out pieces of collateral that not only does the user want to read the insight because the data we have is so unique to us, no one else is putting out content that looks like ours does.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(03:57) - Trust Tree: It’s all about balance

*(16:20) - The Playbook: The data is the hook

*(41:56) - The Dust Up: Approaching product launches thoughtfully

*(44:02) - Eric’s Quick Hits

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Eric on LinkedIn
• Learn more about VTS
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

In this episode, Chris dives into his go-to-market strategy at Wrike, and discusses how they are leveraging AI internally to become more efficient. He also discusses how their marketing strategy allows them to go after different types of companies within a very large market.

Key Takeaways:

• Efficiency in Performance Marketing: There is no time wasted on optimizing marketing budgets to ensure each dollar spent yields a satisfactory ROI.
• ABM: Your ABM tactics are increasingly important for targeting enterprise clients. Start by focusing on refining your org’s ICP and leveraging existing customer advocates to engage potential buyers effectively.
• Metrics and Measurement: It often comes down to data. Continuously monitoring key funnel metrics like lead quality, conversion rates, and cost per lead, to quickly identify and address issues and improve overall performance for your customers.

Quote:

• “From a product perspective, we're looking at how do we leverage AI to take, in some cases, a massive amount of data that sits in our system around work and tasks and projects and things that are happening and how to use AI to help people summarize a big thread of communication and collaboration that's happened over a period of time. And using AI to use natural language to create project plans rather than creating a project plan from scratch saying, hey, I have a project to do to launch this new product in this type of market. And here's what the product consists of. Build me a project plan and it can leverage data that exists both publicly for similar types of projects, as well as within that customer's, set of historical projects. Like, how do you generate content that way, and then how do you use AI to predict risks on a project or how do you use AI to identify resources to staff on a project. So it's interesting: both our internal workers are using AI that's available to us to help us internally. And then we're also looking at our AI strategy from a product and innovation perspective and figuring out how do we make our system more powerful, more intelligent to automate some things, to help people, focus on more creative, human-centric work.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(03:28) - The Trust Tree: Land and expand

*(12:47) - The Playbook: Chris’ uncuttables

*(35:51) - The Dust Up: Defining your ICP company-wide

*(39:06) - Chris' Quick Hits

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Chris Mills on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Wrike
• Learn more about Caspian Studios