August 20, 2025 • 41 mins
Michael Clark (Chief Marketing Officer, Infrascale), who shared proven strategies on how marketing teams can drive growth with fewer resources. Michael highlighted the importance of marketing agility, leveraging real-time data, and integrating customer feedback into marketing decisions. He also stressed why aligning marketing teams with sales and other internal stakeholders using metrics like pipeline and revenue is critical to success.
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(00:00):
The B2B landscape is becomingincreasingly competitive, and
markets are constantlyfluctuating, leading to much
uncertainty andunpredictability. This results
in B2B marketers having to workwith limited budgets, bandwidth
resources, and collapsing timeframes. So what can they do to
deliver more with less? Welcometo this episode of the B2B
(00:21):
Marketers in the Missionpodcast, and I'm your host,
Christian Klepp. Today, I'll betalking to Michael Clark, who
will be answering this question.He is the CMO at Infrascale, who
has more than 15 years ofexperience in developing
marketing strategies, creatingproduct roadmaps and increasing
revenues and success for B2Bcompanies. Tune in to find out
more about what this B2Bmarketers mission is.
(00:46):
Mr. Michael Clark, welcome tothe show, sir.
Thank you. Christian, happy tobe here.
Great to have you on the show,Michael. I'm really looking
forward to this conversationbecause I think, let's be
honest, it's uh it's somethingthat a lot of B2B marketers are
thinking about. I'm not entirelysure if they're losing sleep
over it, but some of them mightbe. And I think this
conversation is something thatneeds to be had. It's really
(01:09):
important. So, um I shall notkeep the guests in suspense any
longer. And uh we'll just jumpright in. Okay?
Sounds good.
Great. So, Michael, you're on amission to help design
innovative marketing strategies,develop product roadmaps, and
conceptualize growth plans toincrease revenues and ensure
(01:30):
enterprisewide success. So, fortoday's conversation, and for
the benefit of the audience, ofcourse, let's focus on the topic
of how can B2B marketing teamsdo more with less. So, before I
start asking you all the um allthe questions, I'm going to set
this up a little bit, right? SoI think we all know it's it's
(01:51):
quite clear that the B2Blandscape is becoming
increasingly competitive.Markets are constantly
fluctuating and it and thatultimately leads to a lot of
uncertainty which also resultsin marketers having to deliver
something with limited budget,bandwidth, resources and
collapsing time frames. A verytough combination if I do say so
(02:15):
myself. But let's kick off theconversation with two questions
and I'm happy to repeat them.Okay. So the first one is why do
you think it's important for B2Bmarketing teams to be agile and
given that where do you see alot of these teams struggle?
Yeah, thanks, Christian, yeah. Ithink it's there's a lot of
importance and agility thatcomes in a variety of ways.
(02:38):
We'll start with the fact that Ithink, as you said the markets
themselves are evolvingconstantly, and that means we
need to evolve constantly withthem. And I think, you know,
we've all had the experiencewhere you come up with a great
hook, a great campaign, a greatemail, whatever it might be,
that works for a month or for aquarter and then tails off
again. And you can expect whatworked yesterday to keep working
(03:00):
forever in the future, you needto be constantly testing and
expanding to evolve that to anew, successful topic. And I
think the agility we're talkingabout allows marketing to make
those quick changes, to adaptquickly based on two of my
favorite things, real time, dataand customer feedback. So when
(03:21):
done properly, I think agilityisn't chaotic. It's a structured
iteration that's grounded indata. It's grounded in
listening, and it's thatdatabase that data driven
decision of are we deliveringresults and are the changes that
we're making working, or how dowe optimize them further?
Absolutely, absolutely. So wheredo you see? Where do you see a
(03:43):
lot of these teams strugglinglike, do they struggle with
dealing with the data andcustomer feedback? I imagine
some of them don't even do that.
I think that's one of the thingsthat I agree with you. That is
missing is marketing is oftendivorced from customers, might
be partners, they might be endusers. They you know, customer
(04:04):
and B2B marketing is writ large,and even then, I'm looking at
external customers. We'll comeback to that in a minute. But to
me, the best insights don't comeoff your dashboard. They don't
come out of your metrics. Theycome from the conversations
you're having, and I think thatthey come from conversations you
have with customers who areusing your product, and when you
(04:24):
listen to them, even if you're afly on the wall, not driving the
conversation, you hear whatsales is saying that they're
responding to. You hear whatquestions they're asking, where
things aren't clear, or they'retrying to drill into a specific
point of interest, and that hasbeen the gold mine that I've
mined all my career for all ofmy best campaigns, is what is
(04:46):
the customer telling me thatthey need, that they want, that
they're looking for, and how isit that then we get that message
back into what we're sending outon the marketing side?
Fantastic insight. I had afollow up question, just based
on what you've been saying inthe past couple of minutes, why
do all of these marketing teamsskip that bit? Like, I mean, at
(05:10):
least some of the marketers I'veworked with, like, they don't
collect this feedback fromcustomers. Is there some? Is it
because of the disconnectbetween them and sales? Is it
because they they've neverspoken to customers or over to
you.
I think it starts with thedisconnect from sales that might
be in some organizations. I'veactually seen marketing and
(05:30):
sales set up as competitiveorganizations, which makes no
sense to me whatsoever. Theseare two people that need be
completely aligned in whatthey're doing, but I think
marketing, I think in a lot ofways, the onus is on marketing
to make this connection. And thereason is I mentioned a moment
ago, we were talking aboutexternal customers before you
(05:51):
have internal customers in yourorganization as well. And when
it comes to marketing, sales isyour biggest internal customer
in almost every case. So asksales what it is that they're
looking for, what data isimportant to them, what handoff
point makes the most sense tothem. And then that lets you
start a aligning on what you'regiving sales. They agree that
(06:13):
their needs, needs are beingmet, and they're more likely to
say, Sure, I'd be happy to letyou sit in on a customer
conversation, because I think itis the organic conversations
that have this information moreso than a survey you send out or
other way of capturing the data.So either you're using meeting
notes that transcribe it, and,you know, fishing for more
(06:35):
information, but I'll tell youbeing there live, and especially
when you are the trust of salesto ask some questions live
really lets you hone in on whyis that important to you? What
is the impact on yourorganization, and the type of
things that really drive theneedle?
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean,just, just to that point I
(06:57):
remember, in one of my previousroles as a product marketer, one
of the biggest learnings I hadwas when I actually went out
into the field with salespeople, right? So went out and
had meetings with the customers,and I could hear what questions
and concerns the customer hadand what objections also very
important, and how the salesdealt with those questions and
(07:20):
how they I wouldn't say counterthe objections, because that
sounds like you're getting readyfor a fight. But how do they
address them?
I think that marketing can havea role there to play, to help
make sure that messaging is ason point as possible within the
realm of sales, to still displaytheir personality and expertise.
But I think when it comes toproviding the general message of
(07:45):
objection handling, we'redealing with some form of
Product Marketing, or marketingand sales alignment, and
marketing and product alignment,depending on the size of the
team in the organization.
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appianite.com/grow, and buildsomething great. Okay, now back
to the episode. I'm going tomove us on to the question about
key pitfalls to avoid. So we'retalking again about how
marketing teams can do more withless. So what are some of these
pitfalls they should look outfor, and what should they be
doing instead?
So when it comes to pitfalls,the first one I see is
(09:11):
potentially valuing andmeasuring the wrong things, and
I still talk to marketingorganizations that may be
focused on their metrics ratherthan maybe their set, their
their sales team, their internalcustomer metrics. So for
example, if you're looking athow many MQLs (Marketing
Qualified Lead) you have, or youknow, your traffic style
(09:33):
metrics, I would encourage youto drive much deeper in the
funnel and start looking atopportunities, pipeline and
revenue, this is where you canprove what you're doing is
actually having positive impacton the on the organization, is
setting up meaningfulconversations for your colleague
in sales, and just drivingsuccess across the board.
(09:57):
The second thing that I think isreally important is the ability
to get stakeholder alignment inwhat you're doing. And this,
again, can get back to the trustissue, but when you show people
that you're working in the samedirection, you can start
experimenting. And I thinkthat's one of the great things
about digital marketing,particular, is you can
(10:20):
experiment and iterate veryrapidly. And whether that's your
basic AB testing or just fullon, hey, we had this idea. We
think it's got legs. We're goingto test it small. We're going to
see if it works. You can getalignment better for saying, our
plan is to do this small inmultiple ways, across multiple
markets, with these variables,and then see how it is
(10:43):
resonating in the market, seewhat it's responding, see what
is happening, and then startaccelerating from there. And it
also then gets you into thatsort of, again, agile from a
technologist standpoint, mindsetof, let's do small things and
iterate them as they'resuccessful, rather than saying,
here is my plan for next year,and I'm going to ride this ship
(11:06):
down one way or another, I amconstantly testing new vendors.
I'm testing new messaging, I'mtesting new channels, and I'm
mixing those things together ininteresting ways, based on what
I hear from the customers andwhere I see this is important.
At infrascale, for example, wehave found one of the things
(11:27):
really critical to our customersthat's a differentiator for us
is our award winning supportteam, and we've learned that
this is the door opener to theconversation for us. In fact,
our sales team was at acompetitive event where we had
to promise to play nicely withthe competitor and not see
anything disparaging. So Icredit my sales team for smiling
(11:49):
as people walked by the boothand said, Hey, how much do you
love competitor X's support.And, you know, people get a sort
of sour look on their face andthen come over and start talking
to them about what we can offer.So that's an example of arming
sales and sales arming marketingwith what we are hearing our
customers are saying isimportant, and it's maybe not a
(12:11):
feature, a benefit, a price, butit's what's driving the
conversation.
Absolutely, absolutely, makethat a bit more customer
focused. But why do you feel somany and I think I can say this
with a certain degree ofconfidence. Why? Why do you
think that a lot of companies inthe B2B space default to talking
(12:31):
about features?
I think because they're used totelling their story when they
need to adapt to telling thecustomer story. And I've used
this argument, and forgive me, Iforget the author, but there's a
book out there called Storybrand that, as an ex English
major, appealed to me greatlybecause it matched basically
(12:52):
marketing against thestereotypical hero's journey and
the point of the book, andhopefully you can place the
author in here. For me in a bit,the point of the book is that
marketing goes wrong when youmake your brand the hero, and
you want to make your customerthe hero, and you are the guide
that made this happen. And I seethis time and time again where
(13:14):
companies stand up and say,these are the six great things
we've done this year to anexternal audience of potential
customers. And I'm like, if youreplace this with here's six
great things our customers havedone this year, you're going to
get much more excitement aboutwhat it is that you're saying
and much more engagement fromthem.
Absolutely, absolutely. And theauthor of the book, building a
(13:36):
story brand is Donald Miller,and I know that because I've
read it twice. So...
That's excellent. My apologiesto Donald Miller, it's a great
book. Highly recommend it. Thereis one other point where I think
there's a key pitfall that I runinto and, you know, Coach my
teams and people that arementoring or other people I'm
working with try to get out ofand that's my phrase that my
(13:59):
team is it grows tired of is,let's not confuse activity with
results. And I think a lot oftimes, we can get very focused
in reporting our own activity,reporting our campaigns, showing
our calendars and everythingwhich are important project
management tools, don't get mewrong, but they are not the
results of what we're doing. AndI would not generally report
(14:23):
that information to externalstakeholders, to external
stakeholders you want to showbusiness value. And again, to
me, that's pipeline. Andfurther, maybe increasing
conversion rates. And if you'reseeing a big change in how your
messaging is penetratingearlier. You can bring that up,
(14:43):
but you want to tie it back tobottom line metrics. Now I will
say it was good news. I wasinterviewing someone a week ago,
and we were talking aboutcampaigns, and I asked her, What
is the ultimate metric? If youhave to pick one metric as to
whether or not your campaign wassuccessful, what is it? And she
put. Paused, and she looked atme and said, annual recurring
revenue. And I was like,hallelujah, they get it. So I
(15:09):
would encourage other marketers,and again, if you talk to your
internal customers, you'rereally going to hear sales
people being like, hey, it'sgreat. We got a whole bunch of
clicks and sign ups. We're notgetting meetings. What do we do
to get meetings? What do we doto drive the meeting forward? Or
say, No, this channel isproducing great conversations,
(15:29):
and they may not all close,because the sales cycle is hard,
and there's a whole you know,set of work that has to be done
there. But if you are armingyour team with quality
conversations, they're going tobe very excited and again,
willing to help you in any waythey can improve success in that
area.
Absolutely, absolutely. You'vetouched on this a little bit at
(15:51):
the beginning of thisconversation, Michael, but I'm
going to go back to it again,like talk to us about the
importance of conducting theright research and having the
relevant strategy in place,right? And especially when it
comes to things like, well,marketing team do more with
less. Now I think it becomessome if I do say so myself, like
a little bit more imperative,
(16:14):
Yes, I will say that researchcan really depend on the
specifics of where we are in theB2B marketing world. So one of
the reasons I start with thecustomers is we all have them in
some way, shape or form. And asI said, in my experience, all of
my most successful campaignhooks came because a customer
told me. So I would also,however, not sleep on what your
(16:36):
competitors are doing,especially if you were in a
market where your competitorsare larger or better funded, you
can win by doing things better.But keep an eye on what
messaging they're trying and youwill sometimes see gaps in
capabilities that you can slipinto because there is an
opportunity to beat more moneywith better execution, with
(16:59):
better messaging with thingsthat are more tightly aligned to
what it is that your end usersand customers are responding to,
but keeping an eye on where theyare and what ideas that might
spark as to how to tie back intoyour core messaging will do
better.
I think that there's a role forAI (Artificial intelligence)
here as well to keep track oftrends and data, and you can do
(17:25):
something specific to execution,like researching time of data
post on various social mediachannels. There's a lot of
capabilities in there that,again, get into the detail of
execution. And I think detailmight be the most one of the
most important things, period,and where I think some people go
off the rails with AI, which Ithink is a great force
(17:47):
multiplier, is you still have tomake sure the detail is correct.
And if you've got a verytechnical audience, you need to
make sure you are presentingthem with a technical message
that resonates and generic. AImay not do that out of the box.
If you're looking at reallyhoning in on specific key
(18:11):
phrases and keywords, you needto make sure they're the right
ones with your audience. And ifyou're making sure that the
channels and spend makes sense,you need to make sure that that
aligns with where your ICP(Ideal Customer Profile) and
audience is actually going to beand what they value. And we'll
maybe come back to that in a fewmore questions.
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Imean, we are in 2025 and what
(18:34):
kind of a podcast would this beabout B2B marketing if we didn't
talk about AI, right? Andabsolutely in terms of, like,
you know, there is a place intime for AI, and certainly it
can help alleviate some of theburden and make the work a bit
more efficient. But, yeah, I doagree, because I do quite a bit
of this copywriting work myself,there is a certain nuance,
(18:58):
especially if it's technical innature, or if it's very like
niche where you have to becareful about how AI is being
used, because, for example, Idid a white paper last year on
third party risk management, andanybody who's an expert in that
field will see if that was aIgenerated content or not, just
because of the way that the theway the Paper is structured, or
(19:20):
the terminology, right? The key,certainly, there's keywords in
there. I mean, everybody useskeywords. But again, I think it
was back to your point, which Iwhich, I think is what you were
trying to say, it's the way thatit's also conveyed, the way that
it's communicated. It's, are youspeaking in the language of that
target audience, right?
Yeah, that's really important.And I think there's an
(19:40):
opportunity for those of us thatcompete in different industries.
You know, we'll talk a bit aboutmaybe iterating content. And I
think there's a real opportunityto create a piece of content
that you then create, youredesign, for specific
industries, using theirterminology, using their tool.
Using their pain points, usingtheir acronyms, so that your ICP
(20:05):
reading that from, let's say,insurance, sees the terms that
they are comfortable with, anddon't have to translate it into
their worldview. I think that'sa really important way to get it
so I'd say, you know, the realstrategy comes from a
combination of that customerinsight comes from some of the
market intelligence that we'retalking about now. What are we
is that we know about themarket, the trends in the
(20:27):
market, and the various datasources available. And then the
last piece, though, I think, isstill internal alignment. How do
you drive that connection withsales, with executives, with
product and with thestakeholders overall? I think
that's how marketing movesitself from a sort of service
organization to a strategicleader in the organization,
(20:50):
Absolutely, absolutely Okay,moving us on. And you know,
you've given us a lot of greattips so far, but you know, like
based on your experience,Michael, how can B2B marketers
start small and accelerate. Sowhat steps do they need to take?
What are those key componentsthat need to be in that process?
(21:13):
So I think it start needs tostart with looking what you have
currently. I think you know youneed to make sure you are
auditing what currently existsand looking at what you've been
doing the same way, because youjust keep doing it over and over
again and put some fresh eyes onit and say, is there an
opportunity to be moreefficient? Here is this web page
(21:36):
that I haven't looked at alignedwith the new terminology and the
new value statements that we'redoing. This can lead to faster
wins, like maybe optimizing someof your lead flow. This can lead
to better integration and dataflow, and it can lead to
measurable pipeline changes.I'll give you one example we've
(21:56):
talked about several times nowI've mentioned aligning and
integrating with the salesorganization. One of the things
I think is common from amarketing standpoint, is to say,
All right, I've launched, say,an ad campaign, and I've got my
ad copy, and I know how tooptimize. Is the headline
working? Is the body working? Isit getting clicks? If it gets
clicks, you look at the landingpage and see how that's working,
(22:18):
and we've learned the lessonthat the landing page needs to
be tightly aligned to themessage that they clicked on.
You can't say, I want to save20% and take them to a free
trial landing page that talksabout an equally different set
of features. You need to keepthat message going. Where I've
seen some organizations fail isthey don't tell sales what that
message was. So when sales doesthe follow up on that
(22:41):
conversation. They say, Hey,have you heard about our free
trial? And the person's going,Oh, no, I was just looking to
save money. Thanks for anyway, Iguess I don't need this meeting.
So remember that you know, ifyou've got a core hook that is
working to get people into adiscussion, make sure sales
knows that and make sure theyknow how to open that
conversation.
(23:02):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Butagain, going back to what we
were talking about earlier,about the disconnect, right? So
how do we, how do we bridgethat, bridge that communication
gap, right?
Right. So we, you know, in myweekly conversations with, you
know, the sales organization asa whole, of various teams. One
of the things we're doing like,these are the campaigns that are
(23:23):
currently running. These are thecore messaging. This is what
it's going to look like in theCRM (Customer Relationship
Management) when it hits. So youknow what it is they're saying.
And in fact, you know, here'sour document recommendation of
the key bullet points you wantto be hitting early in this
conversation that we think havegot them to start this
conversation the first placewhere you go from there depends
(23:44):
on your expertise, because salesis bringing expertise to this
conversation as well. But let'sget through the door that they
expect us to walk through in away that sets everyone up for
success.
Yep, that's absolutely right.That's absolutely right. Okay,
and I think we've talked aboutthis already earlier, but just
(24:06):
to maybe recap, like, how canB2B marketers ensure that
they're aligned with internalkey, you know, stakeholders to
get the right support. And Ithink a lot of this has to do
with this continuouscommunication. Because, you
know, there's, there's been manycases, even in the past, where
if you don't communicateinternally, like what the
(24:27):
marketing team has been been upto, it's going to be out of
sight, out of mind, right? Butit's not just it goes beyond
that, right? It's also preparingthem for that conversation. So
it's not like dropping somesurprise on them, but like, you
know, warming them up for thatdiscussion.
I think it's really similar tothe work we're used to doing
externally, but forget to dointernally, which is, again,
(24:50):
what is the language of ourcustomer, what is important to
our internal customer,executives, sales, stakeholders,
whatever it may be, and it'susually. You know, looking at
where we're winning and how it'simpacting again, things like,
you know, sales accepted leads,you know, pipeline, whatever
(25:10):
your metrics are that showssales has taken this and run
with it. I think it's anopportunity to also make sure
our data is integrated. So if wehave a shared dashboard and
we're sharing the same systems.We can say to sales, here's what
we see that we're passing toyou, and it should align with
what sales sees as them pickingup. So we're now, we're building
(25:31):
trust because we have a singleversion of the truth, and we're
showing that we are aligned onthe same set of numbers. And
again, to me, that number isreally getting into the revenue
impact that you're havingdownstream. So you want to show
marketing impact, not in thingsthat are very much top of funnel
or pre funnel. We can talk aboutthose now and then, but we
(25:54):
really want to make sure themetrics that we hone in on is
important are those that aredown funnel, that are showing
how it is the organization isbenefiting from this. I think
one of the things that I saw soI had the opportunity earlier
this year to be a judge for theStevie American Business Awards
for marketing, which was reallyneat because it was marketing
(26:17):
across all sorts of areas. I sawB2B, I saw B2C. I saw
associations and organizationsall submitting. I think I
personally reviewed 60 differententries across different
categories.
I would recommend those who arefamiliar with the organization
to check it out. They're,they're a great award. They're
(26:39):
really value based and outputbased. So there is no pay for
play here. There's just theopportunity to let your
credentials resonate with thejudging panel of peers in the
organization. But for me, theones that stood out in this were
the people that didn't say welaunched a successful event that
(27:00):
had all these members, you know,it was the ones that said that
was 30% more than the yearbefore. Here's the feedback from
our members. Here is thefeedback from our executives.
Here's the feedback from ourpartners. You know, you can't
always say we had this event andit produced $2 million in
revenue, and the goal was tohave the event anyway. But there
(27:20):
are ways to talk about howeveryone else is viewing that
event and viewing that minicampaign, if you want. You not
always many that one set ofactivities that can show the
value that other people see init, not just the value that
you're showing. So show themetrics year over year compared
to other events, show it basedon maybe reduced spend or costs
(27:46):
per and then tie that back towhat feedback do you have,
internally and externally,wherever you can describe it,
that would be an example of away that I think you're taking
something that is often seen asthis event was expensive, and
showing it back to theorganization a way that says,
No, this event was valuable, andit was valuable because we have
(28:10):
more people coming through thedoors. We had higher survey
number results, higher surveymetrics in terms of
satisfaction. We have thesegreat quotes. We have these
people saying we didn't knowthis. We're excited to do
business with you now. Andthat's how you turn a we had a
good event into we had an eventthat's going to be celebrated,
(28:34):
potentially, not just in ourorganization, but by you know,
people that are waiting how yourevents compare to others.
First of all, congratulations onbeing selected to be a judge. I
think that must have been avery, very exciting
experience.Number two,congratulations on reviewing 60
entries. I'm pretty sure thatwas no small feat, and then it
(28:57):
you certainly had a I'd imagineyou had a certain list of
criteria to go through that youknow, to make sure that the you
know what, what, what you wouldconsider, or what would qualify
to be like a winning entry. Andthank you for sharing those
insights, which, which I thinkwere profound. There were a lot
of questions that were racing inmy head as you were talking, and
(29:18):
I think you've answered most ofthem like, in terms of, like,
what would really stand out assomething that's like, like, a
winner, right?
Yeah. And I think it's, youknow, how can you prove it's a
winner, other than your opinion.
Right.
And I think it's funny, because,again, I think we do this so
often in marketing, but weforget to do it internally about
(29:41):
what marketing is doing
Exactly. Okay, so we get to thepoint in the conversation where
we're talking about actionabletips, and you've given us
plenty, but just imagine there'sa B2B marketer or B2B marketing
team out there who is listeningto this conversation, and there
are three to five things youwant them to take action on
(30:01):
right now? What would thosethings be?
I would start again with thatsort of audit step of what
you're doing now, and makeeverything defend its own
existence. I can share a storyfrom a company I was with a
couple of years back that wasspending an ever increasing
amount on Google ads. And I'mnot against Google ads, and I
(30:24):
agree that there are a lot ofgood reasons to do it, but I was
surprised it was working withsuch a technical audience in
this industry. And I had theopportunity to sit in on some
customer conversations, and Isaid, Hey, you know, how did you
get to us? We've been running alot of ads in this and we're
talking to basically an IT adminwho was like, I would never,
(30:44):
never click on a Google ad. I'mnot. I have no interest, no
offense in what you andmarketing want to tell me. I
want a proven solution to myproblem. Show me the fix. Show
me the white paper. Show me thetechnical expertise that I need.
And that was a great way for usto say great. I'm not saying we
get rid of Google ads, but maybewe take the number down to a
(31:07):
rational number, and wereallocate that spend into some
of these other things that we'regoing to attempt next.
So if you make sure what you'redoing is showing the actual
results that are needed tojustify the time, the resources
and the money that you'respending on it, you can often
use that as a way to get alittle more, maybe not a lot
(31:28):
more, but a little more, to gainsome time to do some additional
tests. I think then the nextthing is, as I said, understand
what is important to yourcustomers, including your
internal sales customers, andthen align on their language
wherever possible. You then tome, start experimenting next you
(31:49):
want to start saying, how do weget this information out into
the market? Where do we thinkthat it's going to work? How are
we going to prove that it'sworking? And for me, I focus
even in the early stages,because we've been talking about
bottom of funnel stuff, maybe onconversion rate optimization as
a way of looking at the earlystages of is this working before
(32:11):
you accelerate it, then you havethe ability to say, we tried
this, we saw these results.We're excited about them, and we
want to try more. But rememberthat this won't work forever, so
keep that testing and iterationprocess going as you go forward.
The next thing, I think, I wouldsay, is especially for smaller
(32:32):
teams, you want to reuse contentwherever possible. So this is
actually an area I think AI canbe helpful, but you can turn one
good piece of content into ahost of social media posts, into
a short video, maybe into awebinar or a webinar, back out
into these pieces. And thenearlier I talked about, if you
(32:54):
have industry specific segments,you redo these pieces focused on
those industries, and yourewrite maybe I would guess 20
to 25% of it that is focused onthe industry's terminology, the
industry's pain points, theindustry's acronyms. I've even
seen software companies thatredo screenshots with industry
(33:14):
applications on the screen thatare that are running. So it's a
great way again, to make thattranslation for your customer to
your value proposition a lotfaster, and then, because this
is how I, in fact, got startedhere at infrascale and as a way
of proving my value for largerorganizations, I would encourage
(33:37):
them to consider fractionalresources as a way of driving
results in ROI (Return OnInvestment) so we, you know,
even in my experience ofmarketing and everything else, I
got my current role because Isaid, Hey, you're right. Give
me, give me 90 days to prove myvalue, and then we'll have a
conversation the same way Iwould do with a lot of these
campaigns and everything else.Let's break apart what's not
(34:00):
working. Let's prove this isworking, and let's accelerate
it.
Some great advice, man, like letme just quickly recap for the
benefit of the audience, right?So call what you always want to
be conducting an audit ofexisting assets. I think was the
first one, then the second oneis understanding you know your
(34:23):
what's important to yourcustomer. The next one was start
experimenting and also get thatinternal buy in. Let that
permission to experiment. Keeptesting and iterating as you go
along, because none of thisshould be written in stone,
especially if you're a small andagile team. Reuse content
wherever possible, and this iswhere AI can play an
instrumental role and thenconsider fractional resources.
(34:47):
Hope I captured all thataccurately.
Yeah, I think that that's agreat start. Depending on the
type of organization you have, Ithink there's something there
for everyone.
Absolutely, absolutely, allright. I. I'm going to ask you
just to kindly get up on yoursoap box here and tell us about
the status quo in your area ofexpertise that you passionately
(35:09):
disagree with, and why.
So I think the thing that I keepreading that doesn't make sense
to me is that AI has the abilityto completely replace marketing,
and I see AI as a fantastictool. I see AI as a force
multiplier that can even theplaying fields between small
(35:29):
teams and large teams when youuse it properly. But I don't
think it's anywhere near thepoint where it replaces judgment
strategic over and strategic andcreative oversight. I think the
specificity of language thatwe've talked about with
technical audiences, I think theability of AI to still, even
(35:51):
today, occasionally hallucinateor be entirely sycophantic, just
make it as a tool that helpswhat you're doing. It makes good
organizations better. At thesame time, it won't help bad
organizations, because junk thatis created with AI just results
(36:11):
in more and faster junk. Solet's get quality content and
use AI to iterate and expandupon it or reuse it in creative
and useful ways.
Absolutely, absolutely the worldis that old adage, right?
Garbage in, garbage out. Allright, fantastic, fantastic.
Okay, so here comes the bonusquestion. So I have it on good
(36:35):
authority, and AI didn't tell methis. All right, I have it on
good authority that you that youenjoy playing DND, excuse me,
for the audience's benefit. DNDstands for Dungeons and Dragons
with a local group as well asyour kids. So the question is, I
guess it's a two prong question,because the first part is like,
Okay, how does that serve as acreative outlet for you? One and
(36:58):
two, what is it about Dungeonsand Dragons and how you play it
and the skills you apply. Howcan that be transplanted or
apply in B2B Marketing?
Sure. So I played DND for manyyears when I was younger,
through high school, throughcollege and with friends after
college, before, like manypeople, it ended up taking a bit
(37:20):
of a backseat to life, and Icredit my wife Christine for
encouraging me to get back intoit, but it's been really cool
that I did so again, both withadults locally, as well as with
my kids and their friends. SoI've enjoyed that as a creative
outlet. I find that, you know,first of all, it's, you know,
(37:42):
it's got some escape element toit, certainly. And I, you know,
I read fantasy and sciencefiction for similar reasons. But
when I look at how it helps, Ithink it helps primarily in two
ways. Number one, especially assomeone running the game a
dungeon master, that's called.It's not you versus the players.
You're telling a story together,but the Dungeon Master has to
(38:05):
try to keep it rolling andadjudicate the rules and things
like that. And it is amazing tome how important communication
is in this role. And I've seenthings where I thought I was
telling something really clearlyto a group of players that some
of them missed or one of themhad no idea what I was saying.
And other times you can set thescene properly. You get the
(38:27):
tone, and the more you lean intoit, the more everybody else
leans back into it, and itsuddenly is a much just richer
experience as they rise to theoccasion of maybe taking a
little risk and being a littleemotional with the role playing.
And, you know, this, thispivotal moment that you come up
with. So choosing the words,listening to the feedback, and
(38:48):
adjusting your strategy is areally big part of this. In both
of these, where I see somedefinite overlap. The other one,
I think, is simply challenges inproblem solving. You know,
whether you're running the groupor in the group, you have a set
of resources and a set ofchallenges, and you're trying to
(39:09):
allocate, how do we prioritize?How do we deal with them? And
then, how do we creatively dealwith them? Because the most fun
elements of this aren'tnecessarily, I walk over and
attack it with my sword. But,you know, Ah, wait, I will shoot
the flaming the lantern abovethem so it falls down on them.
They burst into flames. So thepeople, it rewards creativity in
(39:33):
itself, because those are themoments that the party get. The
group gets excited about thateverybody else starts trying to
up their game and do somethingfun and interesting, and it
might blow out and be a littlesilly now and then, but if we're
there to have fun. So I don'tnecessarily have an ROI or
revenue calculation at the endof the day, but we're trying to
make sure that the experienceresonates.
(39:55):
Absolutely, absolutely, just outof curiosity, because it's been
years. Since I played DND,Michael, but like, how much time
do you spend? How much timecould you spend playing, like,
one game?
So there is one game is hard toanswer. So we generally meet
every two weeks for about fourhours, right? And that probably
(40:18):
is three hours of actually doingthings, and one hour of getting
people to show up and whateverelse we're doing. The story, the
sessions tie into campaigns,which, depending on the length
of the campaign and the story,can go years. I'm probably two
years in with this group, andwe're probably about two thirds
(40:38):
of the way through what I thinkwe're doing, but they they have
their own ideas and go off ontangents. So that's been fun.
The other group that I know ofthat meets in that space, I
think, is on their secondcampaign in that same time
period. So it's a matter of how,how well you keep them moving,
how interested the party iskeeping moving. And I don't
(40:59):
necessarily play that strictlybecause we're there to have fun,
and if you know they want tohave a fun session of a bar
brawl that takes up, you know,half the session, great. Let's
do that.
Fantastic, fantastic. Michael,this has been a great
conversation. I mean, you know,Dungeons and Dragons included.
But thanks again for coming onand for sharing your expertise
(41:22):
and experience with theaudience, please quick
introduction to yourself on howfolks out there can get in touch
with you.
Sure. My name is Michael Clark.I'm the Chief Marketing Officer
at Infra scale, and I've donefractional work supporting other
organizations. You can reach meat michael.clark@infrascale.com
or at LinkedIn,https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeclark/.
(41:45):
Fantastic. Fantastic. Onceagain, Michael, thanks again for
your time. Take care. Stay safeand talk to you soon.
Thank you, Christian. This hasbeen a lot of fun. Take care.
Bye for now.
The B2B landscape is becomingincreasingly competitive, and
markets are constantlyfluctuating, leading to much
uncertainty andunpredictability. This results
in B2B marketers having to workwith limited budgets, bandwidth
resources, and collapsing timeframes. So what can they do to
deliver more with less? Welcometo this episode of the B2B
(00:21):
Marketers in the Missionpodcast, and I'm your host,
Christian Klepp. Today, I'll betalking to Michael Clark, who
will be answering this question.He is the CMO at Infrascale, who
has more than 15 years ofexperience in developing
marketing strategies, creatingproduct roadmaps and increasing
revenues and success for B2Bcompanies. Tune in to find out
more about what this B2Bmarketers mission is.
(00:46):
Mr. Michael Clark, welcome tothe show, sir.
Thank you. Christian, happy tobe here.
Great to have you on the show,Michael. I'm really looking
forward to this conversationbecause I think, let's be
honest, it's uh it's somethingthat a lot of B2B marketers are
thinking about. I'm not entirelysure if they're losing sleep
over it, but some of them mightbe. And I think this
conversation is something thatneeds to be had. It's really
(01:09):
important. So, um I shall notkeep the guests in suspense any
longer. And uh we'll just jumpright in. Okay?
Sounds good.
Great. So, Michael, you're on amission to help design
innovative marketing strategies,develop product roadmaps, and
conceptualize growth plans toincrease revenues and ensure
(01:30):
enterprisewide success. So, fortoday's conversation, and for
the benefit of the audience, ofcourse, let's focus on the topic
of how can B2B marketing teamsdo more with less. So, before I
start asking you all the um allthe questions, I'm going to set
this up a little bit, right? SoI think we all know it's it's
(01:51):
quite clear that the B2Blandscape is becoming
increasingly competitive.Markets are constantly
fluctuating and it and thatultimately leads to a lot of
uncertainty which also resultsin marketers having to deliver
something with limited budget,bandwidth, resources and
collapsing time frames. A verytough combination if I do say so
(02:15):
myself. But let's kick off theconversation with two questions
and I'm happy to repeat them.Okay. So the first one is why do
you think it's important for B2Bmarketing teams to be agile and
given that where do you see alot of these teams struggle?
Yeah, thanks, Christian, yeah. Ithink it's there's a lot of
importance and agility thatcomes in a variety of ways.
(02:38):
We'll start with the fact that Ithink, as you said the markets
themselves are evolvingconstantly, and that means we
need to evolve constantly withthem. And I think, you know,
we've all had the experiencewhere you come up with a great
hook, a great campaign, a greatemail, whatever it might be,
that works for a month or for aquarter and then tails off
again. And you can expect whatworked yesterday to keep working
(03:00):
forever in the future, you needto be constantly testing and
expanding to evolve that to anew, successful topic. And I
think the agility we're talkingabout allows marketing to make
those quick changes, to adaptquickly based on two of my
favorite things, real time, dataand customer feedback. So when
(03:21):
done properly, I think agilityisn't chaotic. It's a structured
iteration that's grounded indata. It's grounded in
listening, and it's thatdatabase that data driven
decision of are we deliveringresults and are the changes that
we're making working, or how dowe optimize them further?
Absolutely, absolutely. So wheredo you see? Where do you see a
(03:43):
lot of these teams strugglinglike, do they struggle with
dealing with the data andcustomer feedback? I imagine
some of them don't even do that.
I think that's one of the thingsthat I agree with you. That is
missing is marketing is oftendivorced from customers, might
be partners, they might be endusers. They you know, customer
(04:04):
and B2B marketing is writ large,and even then, I'm looking at
external customers. We'll comeback to that in a minute. But to
me, the best insights don't comeoff your dashboard. They don't
come out of your metrics. Theycome from the conversations
you're having, and I think thatthey come from conversations you
have with customers who areusing your product, and when you
(04:24):
listen to them, even if you're afly on the wall, not driving the
conversation, you hear whatsales is saying that they're
responding to. You hear whatquestions they're asking, where
things aren't clear, or they'retrying to drill into a specific
point of interest, and that hasbeen the gold mine that I've
mined all my career for all ofmy best campaigns, is what is
(04:46):
the customer telling me thatthey need, that they want, that
they're looking for, and how isit that then we get that message
back into what we're sending outon the marketing side?
Fantastic insight. I had afollow up question, just based
on what you've been saying inthe past couple of minutes, why
do all of these marketing teamsskip that bit? Like, I mean, at
(05:10):
least some of the marketers I'veworked with, like, they don't
collect this feedback fromcustomers. Is there some? Is it
because of the disconnectbetween them and sales? Is it
because they they've neverspoken to customers or over to
you.
I think it starts with thedisconnect from sales that might
be in some organizations. I'veactually seen marketing and
(05:30):
sales set up as competitiveorganizations, which makes no
sense to me whatsoever. Theseare two people that need be
completely aligned in whatthey're doing, but I think
marketing, I think in a lot ofways, the onus is on marketing
to make this connection. And thereason is I mentioned a moment
ago, we were talking aboutexternal customers before you
(05:51):
have internal customers in yourorganization as well. And when
it comes to marketing, sales isyour biggest internal customer
in almost every case. So asksales what it is that they're
looking for, what data isimportant to them, what handoff
point makes the most sense tothem. And then that lets you
start a aligning on what you'regiving sales. They agree that
(06:13):
their needs, needs are beingmet, and they're more likely to
say, Sure, I'd be happy to letyou sit in on a customer
conversation, because I think itis the organic conversations
that have this information moreso than a survey you send out or
other way of capturing the data.So either you're using meeting
notes that transcribe it, and,you know, fishing for more
(06:35):
information, but I'll tell youbeing there live, and especially
when you are the trust of salesto ask some questions live
really lets you hone in on whyis that important to you? What
is the impact on yourorganization, and the type of
things that really drive theneedle?
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean,just, just to that point I
(06:57):
remember, in one of my previousroles as a product marketer, one
of the biggest learnings I hadwas when I actually went out
into the field with salespeople, right? So went out and
had meetings with the customers,and I could hear what questions
and concerns the customer hadand what objections also very
important, and how the salesdealt with those questions and
(07:20):
how they I wouldn't say counterthe objections, because that
sounds like you're getting readyfor a fight. But how do they
address them?
I think that marketing can havea role there to play, to help
make sure that messaging is ason point as possible within the
realm of sales, to still displaytheir personality and expertise.
But I think when it comes toproviding the general message of
(07:45):
objection handling, we'redealing with some form of
Product Marketing, or marketingand sales alignment, and
marketing and product alignment,depending on the size of the
team in the organization.
Absolutely, absolutely. Thisepisode is brought to you by
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(08:06):
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(08:50):
appianite.com/grow, and buildsomething great. Okay, now back
to the episode. I'm going tomove us on to the question about
key pitfalls to avoid. So we'retalking again about how
marketing teams can do more withless. So what are some of these
pitfalls they should look outfor, and what should they be
doing instead?
So when it comes to pitfalls,the first one I see is
(09:11):
potentially valuing andmeasuring the wrong things, and
I still talk to marketingorganizations that may be
focused on their metrics ratherthan maybe their set, their
their sales team, their internalcustomer metrics. So for
example, if you're looking athow many MQLs (Marketing
Qualified Lead) you have, or youknow, your traffic style
(09:33):
metrics, I would encourage youto drive much deeper in the
funnel and start looking atopportunities, pipeline and
revenue, this is where you canprove what you're doing is
actually having positive impacton the on the organization, is
setting up meaningfulconversations for your colleague
in sales, and just drivingsuccess across the board.
(09:57):
The second thing that I think isreally important is the ability
to get stakeholder alignment inwhat you're doing. And this,
again, can get back to the trustissue, but when you show people
that you're working in the samedirection, you can start
experimenting. And I thinkthat's one of the great things
about digital marketing,particular, is you can
(10:20):
experiment and iterate veryrapidly. And whether that's your
basic AB testing or just fullon, hey, we had this idea. We
think it's got legs. We're goingto test it small. We're going to
see if it works. You can getalignment better for saying, our
plan is to do this small inmultiple ways, across multiple
markets, with these variables,and then see how it is
(10:43):
resonating in the market, seewhat it's responding, see what
is happening, and then startaccelerating from there. And it
also then gets you into thatsort of, again, agile from a
technologist standpoint, mindsetof, let's do small things and
iterate them as they'resuccessful, rather than saying,
here is my plan for next year,and I'm going to ride this ship
(11:06):
down one way or another, I amconstantly testing new vendors.
I'm testing new messaging, I'mtesting new channels, and I'm
mixing those things together ininteresting ways, based on what
I hear from the customers andwhere I see this is important.
At infrascale, for example, wehave found one of the things
(11:27):
really critical to our customersthat's a differentiator for us
is our award winning supportteam, and we've learned that
this is the door opener to theconversation for us. In fact,
our sales team was at acompetitive event where we had
to promise to play nicely withthe competitor and not see
anything disparaging. So Icredit my sales team for smiling
(11:49):
as people walked by the boothand said, Hey, how much do you
love competitor X's support.And, you know, people get a sort
of sour look on their face andthen come over and start talking
to them about what we can offer.So that's an example of arming
sales and sales arming marketingwith what we are hearing our
customers are saying isimportant, and it's maybe not a
(12:11):
feature, a benefit, a price, butit's what's driving the
conversation.
Absolutely, absolutely, makethat a bit more customer
focused. But why do you feel somany and I think I can say this
with a certain degree ofconfidence. Why? Why do you
think that a lot of companies inthe B2B space default to talking
(12:31):
about features?
I think because they're used totelling their story when they
need to adapt to telling thecustomer story. And I've used
this argument, and forgive me, Iforget the author, but there's a
book out there called Storybrand that, as an ex English
major, appealed to me greatlybecause it matched basically
(12:52):
marketing against thestereotypical hero's journey and
the point of the book, andhopefully you can place the
author in here. For me in a bit,the point of the book is that
marketing goes wrong when youmake your brand the hero, and
you want to make your customerthe hero, and you are the guide
that made this happen. And I seethis time and time again where
(13:14):
companies stand up and say,these are the six great things
we've done this year to anexternal audience of potential
customers. And I'm like, if youreplace this with here's six
great things our customers havedone this year, you're going to
get much more excitement aboutwhat it is that you're saying
and much more engagement fromthem.
Absolutely, absolutely. And theauthor of the book, building a
(13:36):
story brand is Donald Miller,and I know that because I've
read it twice. So...
That's excellent. My apologiesto Donald Miller, it's a great
book. Highly recommend it. Thereis one other point where I think
there's a key pitfall that I runinto and, you know, Coach my
teams and people that arementoring or other people I'm
working with try to get out ofand that's my phrase that my
(13:59):
team is it grows tired of is,let's not confuse activity with
results. And I think a lot oftimes, we can get very focused
in reporting our own activity,reporting our campaigns, showing
our calendars and everythingwhich are important project
management tools, don't get mewrong, but they are not the
results of what we're doing. AndI would not generally report
(14:23):
that information to externalstakeholders, to external
stakeholders you want to showbusiness value. And again, to
me, that's pipeline. Andfurther, maybe increasing
conversion rates. And if you'reseeing a big change in how your
messaging is penetratingearlier. You can bring that up,
(14:43):
but you want to tie it back tobottom line metrics. Now I will
say it was good news. I wasinterviewing someone a week ago,
and we were talking aboutcampaigns, and I asked her, What
is the ultimate metric? If youhave to pick one metric as to
whether or not your campaign wassuccessful, what is it? And she
put. Paused, and she looked atme and said, annual recurring
revenue. And I was like,hallelujah, they get it. So I
(15:09):
would encourage other marketers,and again, if you talk to your
internal customers, you'rereally going to hear sales
people being like, hey, it'sgreat. We got a whole bunch of
clicks and sign ups. We're notgetting meetings. What do we do
to get meetings? What do we doto drive the meeting forward? Or
say, No, this channel isproducing great conversations,
(15:29):
and they may not all close,because the sales cycle is hard,
and there's a whole you know,set of work that has to be done
there. But if you are armingyour team with quality
conversations, they're going tobe very excited and again,
willing to help you in any waythey can improve success in that
area.
Absolutely, absolutely. You'vetouched on this a little bit at
(15:51):
the beginning of thisconversation, Michael, but I'm
going to go back to it again,like talk to us about the
importance of conducting theright research and having the
relevant strategy in place,right? And especially when it
comes to things like, well,marketing team do more with
less. Now I think it becomessome if I do say so myself, like
a little bit more imperative,
(16:14):
Yes, I will say that researchcan really depend on the
specifics of where we are in theB2B marketing world. So one of
the reasons I start with thecustomers is we all have them in
some way, shape or form. And asI said, in my experience, all of
my most successful campaignhooks came because a customer
told me. So I would also,however, not sleep on what your
(16:36):
competitors are doing,especially if you were in a
market where your competitorsare larger or better funded, you
can win by doing things better.But keep an eye on what
messaging they're trying and youwill sometimes see gaps in
capabilities that you can slipinto because there is an
opportunity to beat more moneywith better execution, with
(16:59):
better messaging with thingsthat are more tightly aligned to
what it is that your end usersand customers are responding to,
but keeping an eye on where theyare and what ideas that might
spark as to how to tie back intoyour core messaging will do
better.
I think that there's a role forAI (Artificial intelligence)
here as well to keep track oftrends and data, and you can do
(17:25):
something specific to execution,like researching time of data
post on various social mediachannels. There's a lot of
capabilities in there that,again, get into the detail of
execution. And I think detailmight be the most one of the
most important things, period,and where I think some people go
off the rails with AI, which Ithink is a great force
(17:47):
multiplier, is you still have tomake sure the detail is correct.
And if you've got a verytechnical audience, you need to
make sure you are presentingthem with a technical message
that resonates and generic. AImay not do that out of the box.
If you're looking at reallyhoning in on specific key
(18:11):
phrases and keywords, you needto make sure they're the right
ones with your audience. And ifyou're making sure that the
channels and spend makes sense,you need to make sure that that
aligns with where your ICP(Ideal Customer Profile) and
audience is actually going to beand what they value. And we'll
maybe come back to that in a fewmore questions.
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Imean, we are in 2025 and what
(18:34):
kind of a podcast would this beabout B2B marketing if we didn't
talk about AI, right? Andabsolutely in terms of, like,
you know, there is a place intime for AI, and certainly it
can help alleviate some of theburden and make the work a bit
more efficient. But, yeah, I doagree, because I do quite a bit
of this copywriting work myself,there is a certain nuance,
(18:58):
especially if it's technical innature, or if it's very like
niche where you have to becareful about how AI is being
used, because, for example, Idid a white paper last year on
third party risk management, andanybody who's an expert in that
field will see if that was aIgenerated content or not, just
because of the way that the theway the Paper is structured, or
(19:20):
the terminology, right? The key,certainly, there's keywords in
there. I mean, everybody useskeywords. But again, I think it
was back to your point, which Iwhich, I think is what you were
trying to say, it's the way thatit's also conveyed, the way that
it's communicated. It's, are youspeaking in the language of that
target audience, right?
Yeah, that's really important.And I think there's an
(19:40):
opportunity for those of us thatcompete in different industries.
You know, we'll talk a bit aboutmaybe iterating content. And I
think there's a real opportunityto create a piece of content
that you then create, youredesign, for specific
industries, using theirterminology, using their tool.
Using their pain points, usingtheir acronyms, so that your ICP
(20:05):
reading that from, let's say,insurance, sees the terms that
they are comfortable with, anddon't have to translate it into
their worldview. I think that'sa really important way to get it
so I'd say, you know, the realstrategy comes from a
combination of that customerinsight comes from some of the
market intelligence that we'retalking about now. What are we
is that we know about themarket, the trends in the
(20:27):
market, and the various datasources available. And then the
last piece, though, I think, isstill internal alignment. How do
you drive that connection withsales, with executives, with
product and with thestakeholders overall? I think
that's how marketing movesitself from a sort of service
organization to a strategicleader in the organization,
(20:50):
Absolutely, absolutely Okay,moving us on. And you know,
you've given us a lot of greattips so far, but you know, like
based on your experience,Michael, how can B2B marketers
start small and accelerate. Sowhat steps do they need to take?
What are those key componentsthat need to be in that process?
(21:13):
So I think it start needs tostart with looking what you have
currently. I think you know youneed to make sure you are
auditing what currently existsand looking at what you've been
doing the same way, because youjust keep doing it over and over
again and put some fresh eyes onit and say, is there an
opportunity to be moreefficient? Here is this web page
(21:36):
that I haven't looked at alignedwith the new terminology and the
new value statements that we'redoing. This can lead to faster
wins, like maybe optimizing someof your lead flow. This can lead
to better integration and dataflow, and it can lead to
measurable pipeline changes.I'll give you one example we've
(21:56):
talked about several times nowI've mentioned aligning and
integrating with the salesorganization. One of the things
I think is common from amarketing standpoint, is to say,
All right, I've launched, say,an ad campaign, and I've got my
ad copy, and I know how tooptimize. Is the headline
working? Is the body working? Isit getting clicks? If it gets
clicks, you look at the landingpage and see how that's working,
(22:18):
and we've learned the lessonthat the landing page needs to
be tightly aligned to themessage that they clicked on.
You can't say, I want to save20% and take them to a free
trial landing page that talksabout an equally different set
of features. You need to keepthat message going. Where I've
seen some organizations fail isthey don't tell sales what that
message was. So when sales doesthe follow up on that
(22:41):
conversation. They say, Hey,have you heard about our free
trial? And the person's going,Oh, no, I was just looking to
save money. Thanks for anyway, Iguess I don't need this meeting.
So remember that you know, ifyou've got a core hook that is
working to get people into adiscussion, make sure sales
knows that and make sure theyknow how to open that
conversation.
(23:02):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Butagain, going back to what we
were talking about earlier,about the disconnect, right? So
how do we, how do we bridgethat, bridge that communication
gap, right?
Right. So we, you know, in myweekly conversations with, you
know, the sales organization asa whole, of various teams. One
of the things we're doing like,these are the campaigns that are
(23:23):
currently running. These are thecore messaging. This is what
it's going to look like in theCRM (Customer Relationship
Management) when it hits. So youknow what it is they're saying.
And in fact, you know, here'sour document recommendation of
the key bullet points you wantto be hitting early in this
conversation that we think havegot them to start this
conversation the first placewhere you go from there depends
(23:44):
on your expertise, because salesis bringing expertise to this
conversation as well. But let'sget through the door that they
expect us to walk through in away that sets everyone up for
success.
Yep, that's absolutely right.That's absolutely right. Okay,
and I think we've talked aboutthis already earlier, but just
(24:06):
to maybe recap, like, how canB2B marketers ensure that
they're aligned with internalkey, you know, stakeholders to
get the right support. And Ithink a lot of this has to do
with this continuouscommunication. Because, you
know, there's, there's been manycases, even in the past, where
if you don't communicateinternally, like what the
(24:27):
marketing team has been been upto, it's going to be out of
sight, out of mind, right? Butit's not just it goes beyond
that, right? It's also preparingthem for that conversation. So
it's not like dropping somesurprise on them, but like, you
know, warming them up for thatdiscussion.
I think it's really similar tothe work we're used to doing
externally, but forget to dointernally, which is, again,
(24:50):
what is the language of ourcustomer, what is important to
our internal customer,executives, sales, stakeholders,
whatever it may be, and it'susually. You know, looking at
where we're winning and how it'simpacting again, things like,
you know, sales accepted leads,you know, pipeline, whatever
(25:10):
your metrics are that showssales has taken this and run
with it. I think it's anopportunity to also make sure
our data is integrated. So if wehave a shared dashboard and
we're sharing the same systems.We can say to sales, here's what
we see that we're passing toyou, and it should align with
what sales sees as them pickingup. So we're now, we're building
(25:31):
trust because we have a singleversion of the truth, and we're
showing that we are aligned onthe same set of numbers. And
again, to me, that number isreally getting into the revenue
impact that you're havingdownstream. So you want to show
marketing impact, not in thingsthat are very much top of funnel
or pre funnel. We can talk aboutthose now and then, but we
(25:54):
really want to make sure themetrics that we hone in on is
important are those that aredown funnel, that are showing
how it is the organization isbenefiting from this. I think
one of the things that I saw soI had the opportunity earlier
this year to be a judge for theStevie American Business Awards
for marketing, which was reallyneat because it was marketing
(26:17):
across all sorts of areas. I sawB2B, I saw B2C. I saw
associations and organizationsall submitting. I think I
personally reviewed 60 differententries across different
categories.
I would recommend those who arefamiliar with the organization
to check it out. They're,they're a great award. They're
(26:39):
really value based and outputbased. So there is no pay for
play here. There's just theopportunity to let your
credentials resonate with thejudging panel of peers in the
organization. But for me, theones that stood out in this were
the people that didn't say welaunched a successful event that
(27:00):
had all these members, you know,it was the ones that said that
was 30% more than the yearbefore. Here's the feedback from
our members. Here is thefeedback from our executives.
Here's the feedback from ourpartners. You know, you can't
always say we had this event andit produced $2 million in
revenue, and the goal was tohave the event anyway. But there
(27:20):
are ways to talk about howeveryone else is viewing that
event and viewing that minicampaign, if you want. You not
always many that one set ofactivities that can show the
value that other people see init, not just the value that
you're showing. So show themetrics year over year compared
to other events, show it basedon maybe reduced spend or costs
(27:46):
per and then tie that back towhat feedback do you have,
internally and externally,wherever you can describe it,
that would be an example of away that I think you're taking
something that is often seen asthis event was expensive, and
showing it back to theorganization a way that says,
No, this event was valuable, andit was valuable because we have
(28:10):
more people coming through thedoors. We had higher survey
number results, higher surveymetrics in terms of
satisfaction. We have thesegreat quotes. We have these
people saying we didn't knowthis. We're excited to do
business with you now. Andthat's how you turn a we had a
good event into we had an eventthat's going to be celebrated,
(28:34):
potentially, not just in ourorganization, but by you know,
people that are waiting how yourevents compare to others.
First of all, congratulations onbeing selected to be a judge. I
think that must have been avery, very exciting
experience.Number two,congratulations on reviewing 60
entries. I'm pretty sure thatwas no small feat, and then it
(28:57):
you certainly had a I'd imagineyou had a certain list of
criteria to go through that youknow, to make sure that the you
know what, what, what you wouldconsider, or what would qualify
to be like a winning entry. Andthank you for sharing those
insights, which, which I thinkwere profound. There were a lot
of questions that were racing inmy head as you were talking, and
(29:18):
I think you've answered most ofthem like, in terms of, like,
what would really stand out assomething that's like, like, a
winner, right?
Yeah. And I think it's, youknow, how can you prove it's a
winner, other than your opinion.
Right.
And I think it's funny, because,again, I think we do this so
often in marketing, but weforget to do it internally about
(29:41):
what marketing is doing
Exactly. Okay, so we get to thepoint in the conversation where
we're talking about actionabletips, and you've given us
plenty, but just imagine there'sa B2B marketer or B2B marketing
team out there who is listeningto this conversation, and there
are three to five things youwant them to take action on
(30:01):
right now? What would thosethings be?
I would start again with thatsort of audit step of what
you're doing now, and makeeverything defend its own
existence. I can share a storyfrom a company I was with a
couple of years back that wasspending an ever increasing
amount on Google ads. And I'mnot against Google ads, and I
(30:24):
agree that there are a lot ofgood reasons to do it, but I was
surprised it was working withsuch a technical audience in
this industry. And I had theopportunity to sit in on some
customer conversations, and Isaid, Hey, you know, how did you
get to us? We've been running alot of ads in this and we're
talking to basically an IT adminwho was like, I would never,
(30:44):
never click on a Google ad. I'mnot. I have no interest, no
offense in what you andmarketing want to tell me. I
want a proven solution to myproblem. Show me the fix. Show
me the white paper. Show me thetechnical expertise that I need.
And that was a great way for usto say great. I'm not saying we
get rid of Google ads, but maybewe take the number down to a
(31:07):
rational number, and wereallocate that spend into some
of these other things that we'regoing to attempt next.
So if you make sure what you'redoing is showing the actual
results that are needed tojustify the time, the resources
and the money that you'respending on it, you can often
use that as a way to get alittle more, maybe not a lot
(31:28):
more, but a little more, to gainsome time to do some additional
tests. I think then the nextthing is, as I said, understand
what is important to yourcustomers, including your
internal sales customers, andthen align on their language
wherever possible. You then tome, start experimenting next you
(31:49):
want to start saying, how do weget this information out into
the market? Where do we thinkthat it's going to work? How are
we going to prove that it'sworking? And for me, I focus
even in the early stages,because we've been talking about
bottom of funnel stuff, maybe onconversion rate optimization as
a way of looking at the earlystages of is this working before
(32:11):
you accelerate it, then you havethe ability to say, we tried
this, we saw these results.We're excited about them, and we
want to try more. But rememberthat this won't work forever, so
keep that testing and iterationprocess going as you go forward.
The next thing, I think, I wouldsay, is especially for smaller
(32:32):
teams, you want to reuse contentwherever possible. So this is
actually an area I think AI canbe helpful, but you can turn one
good piece of content into ahost of social media posts, into
a short video, maybe into awebinar or a webinar, back out
into these pieces. And thenearlier I talked about, if you
(32:54):
have industry specific segments,you redo these pieces focused on
those industries, and yourewrite maybe I would guess 20
to 25% of it that is focused onthe industry's terminology, the
industry's pain points, theindustry's acronyms. I've even
seen software companies thatredo screenshots with industry
(33:14):
applications on the screen thatare that are running. So it's a
great way again, to make thattranslation for your customer to
your value proposition a lotfaster, and then, because this
is how I, in fact, got startedhere at infrascale and as a way
of proving my value for largerorganizations, I would encourage
(33:37):
them to consider fractionalresources as a way of driving
results in ROI (Return OnInvestment) so we, you know,
even in my experience ofmarketing and everything else, I
got my current role because Isaid, Hey, you're right. Give
me, give me 90 days to prove myvalue, and then we'll have a
conversation the same way Iwould do with a lot of these
campaigns and everything else.Let's break apart what's not
(34:00):
working. Let's prove this isworking, and let's accelerate
it.
Some great advice, man, like letme just quickly recap for the
benefit of the audience, right?So call what you always want to
be conducting an audit ofexisting assets. I think was the
first one, then the second oneis understanding you know your
(34:23):
what's important to yourcustomer. The next one was start
experimenting and also get thatinternal buy in. Let that
permission to experiment. Keeptesting and iterating as you go
along, because none of thisshould be written in stone,
especially if you're a small andagile team. Reuse content
wherever possible, and this iswhere AI can play an
instrumental role and thenconsider fractional resources.
(34:47):
Hope I captured all thataccurately.
Yeah, I think that that's agreat start. Depending on the
type of organization you have, Ithink there's something there
for everyone.
Absolutely, absolutely, allright. I. I'm going to ask you
just to kindly get up on yoursoap box here and tell us about
the status quo in your area ofexpertise that you passionately
(35:09):
disagree with, and why.
So I think the thing that I keepreading that doesn't make sense
to me is that AI has the abilityto completely replace marketing,
and I see AI as a fantastictool. I see AI as a force
multiplier that can even theplaying fields between small
(35:29):
teams and large teams when youuse it properly. But I don't
think it's anywhere near thepoint where it replaces judgment
strategic over and strategic andcreative oversight. I think the
specificity of language thatwe've talked about with
technical audiences, I think theability of AI to still, even
(35:51):
today, occasionally hallucinateor be entirely sycophantic, just
make it as a tool that helpswhat you're doing. It makes good
organizations better. At thesame time, it won't help bad
organizations, because junk thatis created with AI just results
(36:11):
in more and faster junk. Solet's get quality content and
use AI to iterate and expandupon it or reuse it in creative
and useful ways.
Absolutely, absolutely the worldis that old adage, right?
Garbage in, garbage out. Allright, fantastic, fantastic.
Okay, so here comes the bonusquestion. So I have it on good
(36:35):
authority, and AI didn't tell methis. All right, I have it on
good authority that you that youenjoy playing DND, excuse me,
for the audience's benefit. DNDstands for Dungeons and Dragons
with a local group as well asyour kids. So the question is, I
guess it's a two prong question,because the first part is like,
Okay, how does that serve as acreative outlet for you? One and
(36:58):
two, what is it about Dungeonsand Dragons and how you play it
and the skills you apply. Howcan that be transplanted or
apply in B2B Marketing?
Sure. So I played DND for manyyears when I was younger,
through high school, throughcollege and with friends after
college, before, like manypeople, it ended up taking a bit
(37:20):
of a backseat to life, and Icredit my wife Christine for
encouraging me to get back intoit, but it's been really cool
that I did so again, both withadults locally, as well as with
my kids and their friends. SoI've enjoyed that as a creative
outlet. I find that, you know,first of all, it's, you know,
(37:42):
it's got some escape element toit, certainly. And I, you know,
I read fantasy and sciencefiction for similar reasons. But
when I look at how it helps, Ithink it helps primarily in two
ways. Number one, especially assomeone running the game a
dungeon master, that's called.It's not you versus the players.
You're telling a story together,but the Dungeon Master has to
(38:05):
try to keep it rolling andadjudicate the rules and things
like that. And it is amazing tome how important communication
is in this role. And I've seenthings where I thought I was
telling something really clearlyto a group of players that some
of them missed or one of themhad no idea what I was saying.
And other times you can set thescene properly. You get the
(38:27):
tone, and the more you lean intoit, the more everybody else
leans back into it, and itsuddenly is a much just richer
experience as they rise to theoccasion of maybe taking a
little risk and being a littleemotional with the role playing.
And, you know, this, thispivotal moment that you come up
with. So choosing the words,listening to the feedback, and
(38:48):
adjusting your strategy is areally big part of this. In both
of these, where I see somedefinite overlap. The other one,
I think, is simply challenges inproblem solving. You know,
whether you're running the groupor in the group, you have a set
of resources and a set ofchallenges, and you're trying to
(39:09):
allocate, how do we prioritize?How do we deal with them? And
then, how do we creatively dealwith them? Because the most fun
elements of this aren'tnecessarily, I walk over and
attack it with my sword. But,you know, Ah, wait, I will shoot
the flaming the lantern abovethem so it falls down on them.
They burst into flames. So thepeople, it rewards creativity in
(39:33):
itself, because those are themoments that the party get. The
group gets excited about thateverybody else starts trying to
up their game and do somethingfun and interesting, and it
might blow out and be a littlesilly now and then, but if we're
there to have fun. So I don'tnecessarily have an ROI or
revenue calculation at the endof the day, but we're trying to
make sure that the experienceresonates.
(39:55):
Absolutely, absolutely, just outof curiosity, because it's been
years. Since I played DND,Michael, but like, how much time
do you spend? How much timecould you spend playing, like,
one game?
So there is one game is hard toanswer. So we generally meet
every two weeks for about fourhours, right? And that probably
(40:18):
is three hours of actually doingthings, and one hour of getting
people to show up and whateverelse we're doing. The story, the
sessions tie into campaigns,which, depending on the length
of the campaign and the story,can go years. I'm probably two
years in with this group, andwe're probably about two thirds
(40:38):
of the way through what I thinkwe're doing, but they they have
their own ideas and go off ontangents. So that's been fun.
The other group that I know ofthat meets in that space, I
think, is on their secondcampaign in that same time
period. So it's a matter of how,how well you keep them moving,
how interested the party iskeeping moving. And I don't
(40:59):
necessarily play that strictlybecause we're there to have fun,
and if you know they want tohave a fun session of a bar
brawl that takes up, you know,half the session, great. Let's
do that.
Fantastic, fantastic. Michael,this has been a great
conversation. I mean, you know,Dungeons and Dragons included.
But thanks again for coming onand for sharing your expertise
(41:22):
and experience with theaudience, please quick
introduction to yourself on howfolks out there can get in touch
with you.
Sure. My name is Michael Clark.I'm the Chief Marketing Officer
at Infra scale, and I've donefractional work supporting other
organizations. You can reach meat michael.clark@infrascale.com
or at LinkedIn,https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeclark/.
(41:45):
Fantastic. Fantastic. Onceagain, Michael, thanks again for
your time. Take care. Stay safeand talk to you soon.
Thank you, Christian. This hasbeen a lot of fun. Take care.
Bye for now.
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