The Pipeline Revolution
Maura Rivera, CMO at Qualified, shares insights into the pipeline revolution, creating thought leadership content to build awareness, and how to keep a pulse on conversations to engage buyers.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Demand Gen Visionaries.
I'm Ian Faizan, CEO of Cast Mein Studios.
And today, I am joined by a very special guest, Mora, how are you?
>> I'm good, Ian.
How are you?
I'm excited to be here.
>> Excited to have you.
After all this time, after so much love and appreciation for
our good friends that qualified, we finally landed you on the show.
I just am beside myself with joy.
>> It's fun to be on the other side.
It's kind of exciting.
>> I know, and surreal at the same time.
Obviously, our listeners know qualified has been our presenting partner from
day one of this show.
As I say all the time, and we love you all dearly.
But we've never got inside the inner workings of qualified and
your marketing strategy and all the cool stuff that you're working on.
So why not now?
Why not us?
And let's start off with what was your first job in demand-gen?
>> Yeah, that's a great question.
So I've kind of always been in some sort of marketing role.
Ever since I was little, I did student council, I was a comms major in college.
I feel like I've always been attracted to the idea of getting people excited
about something.
Whether it's a school dance or a program or some event that we're putting on.
And then my first job out of college was at a little company called Salesforce.
You might have heard of it.
And I kind of stumbled into the opportunity to work at Salesforce, but
it wasn't in a marketing capacity, it was in a different department.
And about a month into working at Salesforce, I went to Dreamforce.
And I looked around and first was like, is this how all work conferences are?
This is pretty cool.
There's Metallica Play or Stevie Wonder.
But I thought to myself, I want to be part of the team that puts this on.
I want to be part of the team that can tell these really incredible stories
that can do
these incredible product demos that can get a community excited and
kind of bring them together from around the world.
And so Salesforce and the Dreamforce experience is what kind of brought me into
the marketing world and less than a year into my work at Salesforce,
I joined the marketing team and that was kind of where I started my official
marketing
career and I got to wear many different hats in the marketing org.
I was an EA to our CMO and executive assistant.
I was on the webinar team.
I was on the video team doing live broadcasts of our events around the world.
I was on the social media team.
So it was just like an almost like a MBA program.
I was just kind of in it and got to learn from some of the best and
brightest minds in marketing and that kind of set me on my path to where I am
today.
And where you are today is CMO of Qualified.
So tell us a little bit about where you all are at and what it means to be CMO
of Qualified.
Yeah, so Qualified is a pipeline generation platform and
more purpose built for Salesforce customers.
So we have two key products.
We have a conversational sales and marketing product and then we have a buyer
intent product.
And what that all means is we help companies better leverage their website,
the corporate website to really understand who's on their site,
have real time conversations with those people and generate more pipeline
faster.
We recently went to market with an even bigger vision called the pipeline cloud
So we are the pipeline cloud for Salesforce customers.
We are kind of this modern motion for CMOs, CROs, revenue ops leaders to
engage with buyers and generate pipeline.
And as CMO, I oversee our marketing team.
We are a fast growing team.
I've been here for a couple years, so I was marketer number one at Qualified.
So way back in the day when we started demand gen visionaries together,
you've kind of seen it from the beginning, but fast forward a few years and
we have a couple hundred employees.
We are the number one solution on the Salesforce app exchange.
And I'm overseeing our marketing team, which does everything from content and
communications to product marketing to demand gen to creative.
And so that's kind of our ragtag team and I'm super proud of the brand that we
're building.
>> And what a brand it is.
>> It's funny, I was talking to one of the folks on our team earlier today and
we were talking about just BDB marketing and kind of how stale and boring it
kind of
sometimes is.
And we were just marveling at how awesome Qualified's brand is.
So we're gonna get into that a little bit because I think I wanna hear how you
think about brand.
But I know we're old pals, old hat at this point,
but it's just never ceases to amaze me that whenever I wanna send an example of
what right looks like that we shoot them over to Qualified.com.
>> Thanks Ian.
>> Kudos to the team.
>> Kudos to the team.
>> All right, let's go to the trust tree where you can go and
feel honest and trusted and share those deepest, darkest demand gen secrets.
Tell me a little bit about Qualified's customers.
>> Yeah, so we serve customers that you sales force, so
that kind of gives us an immediate focus.
But the crazy thing is most BDB companies around the world do use Salesforce.
So we serve BDB companies who use Salesforce, kind of mid market companies.
Usually in the high tech space, but we have other customers outside of that
industry.
And our buyer is a VP of demand gen or a CMO.
So it's kind of fun because we're selling to marketers and
as a marketer that makes life a little bit more fun.
So that's kind of who we're going after.
>> And I'm curious, you just had a huge announcement about the company.
You have two products now, obviously that's a bit of a change going from one
product to two different personas, how do you think about that?
>> Yeah, that's a really good question.
You know what, it hasn't all been super straightforward or
we haven't always known the answer.
When we first started as a company,
we emerged with our conversational sales and marketing product, which is super
sleek.
And at the beginning as a company,
we just wanted to be really straightforward with who we are and what we did.
Because we needed people to come to our site and
immediately understand how we could help solve their problems.
Which is connecting buyers and reps on your website in real time.
In the fall, we started to feel like, okay,
this conversational product is great.
But in the midst of us kind of collecting all this data on website visitors,
we also have all of these buyer intense signals.
How can we package them up and surface them for our customers?
So we released a product called Signals in the fall.
And then cut to today, it's the spring, and
we're kind of relaunching as a larger pipeline cloud solution that encompasses
those two products.
And we kind of took a crawl walk run approach to shifting our messaging,
to be honest.
We were a little bit nervous to totally,
like swing the pendulum on our messaging when we launched signals in the fall.
Because we hadn't proven the product yet.
So we felt like we were just starting to build brand credibility for
our conversational product, and we didn't want to erase that and
start with something totally new.
Over the last few months, our second product has picked up steam.
We've gotten customers using it and successful with it.
So now we feel like we're ready to confidently reshape our messaging,
up level our messaging.
But we don't want to forget the flagship product that got us here.
So we were just working on a bunch of new things.
A new keynote to deliver our corporate message, a new homepage to deliver that
message.
And we had a lot of debate and discussion on how much do we lean into our
flagship
product?
How do we lean into our new product?
How do we speak to the primary buyer for our conversational product?
How do we speak to the new buyer for our second product?
And I would say we try and be really straightforward in our copy so
that we don't confuse people with what our two products do.
We've developed brands for each of the products, so they look a little bit
different
and feel a little bit different.
And we're still trying to figure out how can we speak to multiple buyers?
It was actually much easier and simpler when we had one product, one clear
buyer.
So we're trying to figure out how do we make that shift in a kind of a gradual
way
so that we don't just flip the switch and appear like a totally different
company
because we're not.
>> Yeah, and how does that buying committee look and
differ for the two?
Who's the end buyer and then who are the different stakeholders?
>> Yeah, so it's almost like a flip-flop between the two.
Our conversational product, our end buyer, is a VP of demand,
generous CMO because they own the website, they own the pipeline number.
But the user is a sales rep.
They're somebody who's logged into the app every day.
They're trying to meet with buyers via live chat, voice video, have those
conversations.
Our signals product, which is a buyer intent product,
we're selling more to a RevOps leader or a sales leader because they went
buying
intent data for their sellers.
But marketing's still involved because more buyer intent that makes sellers
more effective at generating pipeline is a good thing too.
So we're kind of speaking to the same broad audience for both, but
we kind of flip-flop like the decision maker and
the influencer for each of our products.
>> And how do you organize your team to go after those accounts?
What does your marketing team look like at this point?
>> Yeah, in terms of kind of how we think about our target customers.
>> Yeah, in the shape of your team and how it's laid out.
>> Yeah, so we have a list of target accounts.
We have an account-based marketing strategy.
The only way where our teams currently kind of divvied up between the two
products
is our product marketing team.
We want to have a product marketer who's really responsible or
product marketing team who's responsible for each of our products.
But our demand gen team, our content comms team, our creative team,
they're all thinking about the holistic solution and product offering.
And then we kind of tag team different projects depending on what we're trying
to amplify for each product.
But right now we're still kind of holistically focused on moving our
solution forward.
So we're not as divvied up by product quite yet.
>> And then how do you think about demand?
What's your demand strategy as part of the broader marketing strategy?
>> Yeah, so for us, the website is King, which is probably no surprise.
But for us, a huge, huge portion of our pipeline comes through the website
through using our own product.
We call it qualified on qualified.
But as we back up and we think about pipe gen for our company,
we talk about the different horsemen, if you will.
So we have inbound and then we have outbound, which is our outbound sales reps
and
our account executives.
Then we have partnerships, everything that we're doing with our channel
partners,
our technology partners.
And we also have referrals, what referrals are coming in through our employees
and
through our customers.
Referrals is a bit harder to scale.
Partners has huge opportunity for us.
But inbound and outbound is where the bulk of our pipeline comes from.
And we actually combined the inbound and outbound horsemen goals, if you will.
So that sales and marketing are both working towards one shared metric.
Because when we first started, we started to feel that age old tension,
the lovely tension that sales and marketing always feel about.
Attribution and where did this opportunity come from?
They saw a campaign, they arrived on our site, they received an outbound email,
they came back to the site, they converted there.
And we said early on, you know what, we're one team, we have one shared goal.
So how can we work together and not get so caught up in the attribution mess?
So inbound and outbound is what drives the majority of our pipeline.
We have this thing that we call the one two punch, which is an outbound email.
They click through, they arrive on the site, we convert them with a
conversation.
And that is where a ton, a ton of our pipeline comes from.
And it's cool because we get to use our own products.
So we're starting to use our signals by our intent product to shape the
accounts
that we go after out of our target account list.
Do the one two punch, it becomes a one two three punch.
And that's how we convert a ton of our pipeline.
And it's been super fruitful for us.
So we're trying to figure out how can we just kind of double down on that
motion.
And it's a lot of orchestration between the sales team and the marketing team.
And as part of that outbound, you know, you mentioned, you know,
sales having a portion of that and as part of that outbound motion.
And then I'd imagine a large amount of paint advertising is going into this.
How do you view kind of those paid those paid avenues?
Yeah. So from a paid perspective, ads drive a healthy chunk of pipeline for us.
We're focused on, of course, everything from SEM to we're doing ABM.
Now we just started with metadata.
They've been really an awesome platform for us to use.
And so and then we're doing stuff on LinkedIn.
So from an ad perspective, we just look at ads really as air cover.
How can we create that brand awareness on the channels that we care about?
And we're super, super focused on our target accounts.
If my mom, God, lover, sees an ad, that's great.
But that's actually not important to us.
We want the CMO at that target account profile that we just talked about.
We went them seeing our advertisements.
So ads we see as air cover, we have a lot of people who will directly engage
with an ad
and they'll come to the site and convert right there.
But there's also a lot of handoff from ads to outbound to inbound.
And it kind of all works together, which is truly the goal of account based
marketing.
And outside of advertising, events are huge for us.
We kind of went to turn on our events program and then March 2020 hit.
And we kind of had to rethink everything, but it's been fun over these last few
months because events are back and hopefully they're they're back to stay.
And so that helps us a lot from a pipe gen perspective as does kind of all
of the organic traffic that we're getting to our site.
Let's go to the playbook.
The playbook is where you open up that playbook and talk about the tactics that
help you win.
You play to win the game.
Hello.
You play to win the game.
You don't play to just play it.
You know, it's coming more.
Those three channels or tactics that are your uncuttable, budge items.
This is my favorite question of every episode.
And I love when uncutables drops every few weeks.
But yes, my uncutables number one, it's the website.
We spend a huge, huge majority of our time as a marketing organization working
on the site.
How can we have a really compelling B2B site?
How can we make sure that we're always innovating on the creative and the copy
writing for our site?
But most importantly, how is it optimized for conversion?
How can we make sure that when a target buyer arrives at our front door, we're
ready to greet them.
We're ready to turn them into a real sales conversation and book our next
meeting.
So the website is king.
If we didn't have our website, everything else would crumble.
And then beyond the website, video and content are huge for us.
Look at this podcast.
This has been this.
Well, hey, no, this has been like a wealth of content for us, which has been
awesome.
In every B2B company needs to be a content machine.
Look at sales force and sales force plus.
Look at all these incredible B2B companies.
I look at gong.
I look at outreach and they are just distributing content all day.
Every day, my LinkedIn feed is blowing up with sizzle videos and guides and
live shows and all of the sales force studios stuff that they're doing is so,
so good.
So content is is king.
We just rolled out something called qualified plus, maybe not the most original
name, but people get it.
And we're really doubling down on video this year.
We started doing something that we call keynotes kind of inspired by, I guess,
a dream force keynote meets an apple product release.
And those have been really cool for us because we will use a keynote as a way
for us to get our message into market and we've kind of iterated on how we
shoot them.
We shoot them in this huge green screen studio.
We're at John Madden's old studio in the East Bay last week shooting our most
recent keynote and it helps us get our corporate narrative tight.
We shoot these keynotes and we'll have different people from our company
delivered different messages.
We'll do product demonstrations.
And from that keynote, we'll get like 15 different assets from it.
So we have sizzle videos for social.
We have videos for qualified plus.
We have demos that we can share in sales cycles.
And so video for me will never go away.
And I think a lot of that is inspired by my time at sales force when I was on
the video team.
I just have this passion for creating compelling, really compelling video
assets.
And then the last channel or thing I would never cut beyond website and
LinkedIn or sorry website and content is LinkedIn.
For us, we're selling to sellers and marketers and I need that channel to get
my content in front of these people to get them engaged.
And LinkedIn has just blown up over the last few years.
It's not the most fruitful channel in terms of pipeline generation, but I know
it's incredibly successful for brand awareness with the target audience that we
care about.
And so I would never want to get rid of that channel.
Yeah, I am.
The LinkedIn thing is so fascinating to me.
I see I see the same stuff in terms of it's not necessarily the most.
Convertible channel all the time, but they did a great job with their ads.
And that's like the big difference is their ad units change significantly and.
They put some systems in place to reduce kind of the spaminess of LinkedIn a
little bit, but their ad units are really viewable.
And I think that that's like a huge, huge bonus.
Because you know, if you're serving them on mobile that like they're going, you
're getting impressions and that always to me was the big problem is like if you
're if you're serving these ads, you know, wherever it is that these LinkedIn
ads, which are like insanely expensive.
You got to know that they're going to people and that they're going to get seen
Yeah, and we we have different ads for different types of content, right?
We'll use carousel for certain content.
We'll use video ads for other things.
We can get super specific on who we target.
Maybe we want sales force executives to see certain announcements, but we want
our target buyers to see others.
And it's just a little binge worthy, like it's kind of maybe I just need to get
a life, but I look at LinkedIn a lot the way just as much as I look at
Instagram.
It because I like to see what my peers and what my former colleagues are up to
and it keeps me in the know about the world of B2B tech.
So I can't live without it and I think our company couldn't live without it.
Yeah, I think the other thing there too that we've seen with this show and and
across all the shows that we do at Caspian is
that there's a big difference between what we're seeing now, the huge insight
is when you post an article that has stock imagery that says like four tips for
CMOs.
That post is going to do I don't know the exact number, but significantly worse
than the post that says Scott Holden's four tips to be a better CMO with Scott
Holden's face on there.
And that post is going to do significantly worse than a video of Scott Holden's
four tips.
Shout out to Scott.
Shout out to Scott.
He just came to our company kickoff.
We love Scott Holden.
Yeah, he's the best.
And that is like the insight where you talk about the algorithm favors video.
The user favors seeing people's faces because if you see someone's face that
you recognize, you'll stop on it.
And I'm not really interested in what random some random person wrote about
four tips to be a CMO.
I'm interested in what more is doing.
I'm interested in what Scott's doing.
And like this is I think the key takeaway for people as they're creating this
stuff is like that is where content is already and it's where it's going to
continue to go.
Well, and it's the power of community.
I think communities are kind of the future.
People are not always going directly to the company to do their research.
They're going to their peers.
They're connecting with each other in these Slack groups.
We've set up on LinkedIn.
That's how people are learning today.
Yep.
And I think companies need to find a way to inject themselves into the
conversation or keep a pulse on the conversation so that they can engage those
buyers in a more thoughtful way and kind of fit into their lives versus
expecting the buyer to fit into theirs.
Yeah, for sure.
And I think that we just have the resources to make that stuff better.
Like this is one of the things, you know, when we set on to make this show or
to make inside the Ohana, which is the new show that we just launched.
And that that Dan Darcy is hosting about all the inner workings of what's what
's going on at Salesforce and it's gone on at Salesforce with all these, all
these cool people.
That this type of like insider content for lack of a better term is so much
more consumable.
But if those people were left to their own devices, they wouldn't make it.
And that's the difference is like, if like, you know, if you get someone to,
you know, share an hour of your time and then you distill those thoughts into
an easily digestible format, like that stuff is great.
If you were to say like, Hey, Ian, go write me like, you know, a thousand words
on what it means to be the CEO of a startup, I'd be like, I don't have time for
that.
Right.
And like, so these insights are not getting out in the world.
And and I think what you all have have done at qualified is by creating this
like massive amount of content that speaks to real stuff that's actually going
on out in the world and using your team of, of creatives to like sift through
that and add in your own insights, add in what you're seeing for.
From from from the platform and like, that's, I think, where the future of
content is going is, what do you own and you have access to?
And then how can you, you know, facilitate telling other people stories better?
Mm hmm.
And we're excited.
Like we just moved into a new office and we're building a little content studio
, qualified studios.
You can come in and shoot DGB in there, but we're going to keep doubling down
on video.
We're going to keep doubling down on content because that is how you create
awareness.
That is how you get people interested in the problems that you're solving, the
solution that you have.
You need to do thought leadership content and all different mediums to kind of
get people hooked and really build that awareness.
So we recently just did an episode with Randy from Uberflip and I was, I was
checking out his podcast and he interviewed a bunch of CMOs and asked them what
they're looking for in content.
And one of the, one of the CMOs said, I don't want it to be about you.
That it's like this debits and credits system.
And it's like every time you talk about yourself, you're, you're, you're losing
, you're losing money.
Every time you're not, you're, you're gaining it back.
And I think that that's like the other thing here is so many people just like
want to create content about features and benefits.
And it's like, I don't care, you know, you have to tie it back to the problem
your audience is facing and make them nod their heads.
We just did our pipeline cloud keynote and our CEO, Craig.
He was talking about this revolution of the modern B2B buyer.
And he was talking about the content revolution, which is exactly what we're
talking about right now.
The privacy revolution, people are more protective of their PII.
The communication revolution.
Everybody wants to interact one click chat voice video.
And as companies, we need to shift how we meet with buyers and shift how we
keep up.
And that keynote storytelling was really compelling because it's something that
we could all nod our heads to.
And then that story kind of teed up how our solution can help solve those
problems.
But you have to think bigger than yourself.
And that's why I love not to just plug to man, Jen visionaries, but we have
this content with these great luminaries on the show.
And they're not all customers and they're not talking about our product.
But people want to hear from their peers or people they look up to and they
want to know what are the problems they're facing, what are the solutions they
're finding.
And that's the best type of content because qualified is barely ever mentioned
within it.
But then we're creating a little bit, hopefully of awareness for for listeners
throughout.
And so that's the prime content.
Of course, you need bottom of the funnel content.
You need best practices.
You need demo videos.
You need how to's, but you need to serve that up to really bottom of the funnel
readers or listeners or viewers and not expect that top of the funnel people
who don't even know who you are want to see that or hear that quite yet.
How can you be thought leaders in the space?
How can you help people be better at their jobs?
And if you can do that, then you'll kind of pull them in and get them more
attracted to your brand.
I was just talking to a match or fear.
This is a very named dropy day, but very popular.
But Matt, who's a CMO of April, I owe, and he was saying, you know, the show
that we made with them over the edge.
He was saying, you know, when you make a show, it means that
you try to find something that was like this and you couldn't find it.
So you figure, I guess I got to make one myself, right?
And that's like how we felt with TGV is like we just didn't, you know, we didn
't.
We saw that there was not a show that was structured in this way that of how we
would like it, how we would like the information presented to us.
And I think that that's how how other people should think is like, if there's
not the asset out there that you think is done the right way, then you should
make that.
So I have a question for you.
What is something that is your most uncutable budget item or most cuttable
budget item?
What do you think is not working or something that you don't want to invest in?
I'm always nervous about webinars, which is funny because I mentioned I used to
be on the webinar team at Salesforce.
I just, so we're just starting our webinar program finally because we have to.
It's silly that we've never.
We've never done it.
I feel like as marketers, we need to try webinars.
We like they're a tried and true channel.
We've always kind of resisted doing them, but we know it's the time as a like
as we mature as a company.
But I am really hesitant about any gated content that requires somebody to be
available on Tuesday at 10 am Pacific time and to fill out a gate for content
that they don't even know or fill out a form for content.
That they don't even know what they're going to get.
So I don't know if I can say I'd cut it since we haven't actually done it yet,
but we're just standing it up as a bit of a test, but I am allergic to gated
content, I guess is is my short answer to that.
I think we need to make content available on demand.
I think we need to make it available through different channels, whether it's
podcast, video, written, whatever it may be.
And I get nervous about those old school tactics to try and capture leads and
kind of bait and switch just to get some leads in the door.
Yeah.
And you have to basically waste the marketing.
That's what always drives me crazy is you have to do all this marketing to send
someone to something that doesn't exist yet.
Right.
So you're like, if I just had the asset that I was just saying, just watch this
right now.
I might agree, I agree with all that stuff. I agree with, like, I don't think
we should get anything, but the only side, the other side of this is like, I do
have some understanding that this is the way that I like to do things and that
there are people who need, you know, you need to have a personal trainer so
that it forces you to go to the gym.
I totally get that.
You have the calendar invite for a webinar.
Maybe you'll join.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Maybe you'll, maybe you'll set the time.
So, are you going to do like standing webinar?
I love this standing webinar idea, but it's a little joke.
You mean of like a daily demo type thing or like, just like every week this
time?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Either daily demo, weekly demo or like a weekly webinar that you just always
have, you know, whatever at that one time that you always do.
Yeah.
I've done that at past companies.
What we're thinking of doing is on demand webinars every couple of weeks, but
then we're there for live Q and A so people can have that interactivity.
And we're not going to gate them.
We're going to, we call it conversational content.
So we'll have our content available and we will use kind of our product on the
right hand side for people to interact with us if they want, give us their
email if they want, but it won't be a requirement.
So it's going to be a bit of a test of a new school more on demand, ungated
kind of content presentation, if you will.
I love it.
That's fun.
Well, we're going to have to have you back to hear how that hair that went.
Time will tell.
Yeah.
Favorite campaign.
Oh, okay.
Our, um, our pipeline cloud campaign that we just did has been my favorite
campaign.
It was an incredibly exciting campaign because we had to build the narrative in
the story and we had to build kind of the look and feel and creative for this
campaign and then from that hung everything that we put into market.
It was much harder than a product plunge.
When we do a product launch, you can see the answers.
You kind of see the product roadmap.
You know where it's going.
It's a bit more straightforward and clear of the story you tell the value props
kind of up leveling your positioning and launching this new vision was harder,
but that also made it more satisfying when we put it into market.
Um, we put together this story.
We shot this keynote.
We have a new homepage.
We have ads.
We have emails.
We have, um, video assets on YouTube all over social.
And that was exciting, especially since I've kind of been at the company since
the beginning to see us start to become more visionary and more forward looking
with the story that we're telling was fun.
And it had a lot of healthy debate.
What are the words we use?
How do we visualize this?
Is this right?
Is that right?
Hours and hours of us sitting in a room, a virtual room with our CEO and our
product marketer and our content marketer, um, kind of developing this new
narrative months and months actually before.
Sitting down with our founders and with our leadership team and interviewing
them about the future of the company and where they see it going.
And then from all of those months of discussions, we've packaged up a clear
compelling narrative and presented it to the world in a way that I'm really
proud of.
And so that was fun because it had, I had to stretch, um, some creative muscles
that hadn't stretched in a while because it was such a bigger story than any
other product launch that we've done.
Um, and then we also recently launched a qualified advantage campaign.
How are we different from the competition?
Why do you win if you choose our product?
Um, and we kind of came up with some, some clever things that we put into
market that all tied around this larger landing page that told the story of why
choose qualified.
It was validated by a bunch of customer reviews and raving fans.
We got creative with direct mail about how you can kind of, um, come away to
qualified and how you can kind of join us.
And we sent some, um, away suitcases and kind of to tell people to like come
join the qualified team.
So that was fun because that was clever.
I feel like now that we've done a lot of the foundational campaigns, we can
start to go to the next level with visionary campaigns with our advantage
campaign and those all involve a little bit more creativity, I would say.
So those have been two fun ones that we've done just this quarter.
And we, we love a launch.
We love a reason to talk about something.
It shows momentum.
It shows innovation.
It shows velocity.
So I love working towards a launch date and having kind of everybody marching
towards the same goals and going to market with a big story, a big announcement
That's how you create a brand.
That's how you seem big and exciting and innovative.
Um, so we really pride ourselves on big launches, big campaigns that have kind
of all of the things, if you will.
Worst campaign and it doesn't have to be a qualified on it can be in previously
in your career.
Worst campaign.
This is hard.
I feel like we've had some event flops in the past at past companies where you
actually have one, one visual at a past company where we were going to, I don't
know if it's a campaign per se, but it's an event.
We were going to do like a happy hour for customers and prospects.
And it was after a big event that day, we were going to kind of cap off the day
with an event hosted by our company at one of our past companies.
And it was crickets.
It was a bunch of no shows.
It was snowy in New York.
We thought we had the bar paid for.
We had the food paid for.
And it was a flop.
And we blamed some of the external circumstances. We thought people were
probably tired from the full event. They were at that day.
But that is a memory of a room full of not a lot of people that I'll never
forget.
But you learn.
We took it to our next one.
We thought, okay, how do we guarantee more attendance?
How do we get people on the hook?
How can we rethink the timing and the venue of the event?
And then while we were there, we just tried to enjoy our fair share of the food
and drink that we had already paid for.
But it was a lesson learned. And I'll never forget that.
I got to ask, so we just launched inside the Ohana.
And we have another show coming, which I sort of tease on the show, but I haven
't really fully went into it yet.
And I'm curious, like, why have different shows?
Like, why is that something that's important?
Yeah, for us, they serve different audiences.
And it allows us to build out content that maps back to our different personas.
For us, we've talked about this marketing persona.
DGB is money for that.
Demand Gen Visionaries, people tune in. They want to hear how their peers are
doing their jobs.
I like it too, because it helps you get outside of yourself and your network.
I feel like we all have our little communities and we do things the same way.
And I love Demand Gen Visionaries because I'm hearing from these folks who I've
never met in real life,
but they challenge my train of thinking and they make me kind of think a
different way.
But then for us, we have different personas.
So we have this signals product that's more of a RevOps audience.
And we want to create that leadership content that helps RevOps professionals
be better at their jobs.
And a RevOps person isn't going to be better at their job by listening to
Demand Gen Visionaries.
Maybe they'll learn some things about marketing, but it's not tailored for them
I'd rather try and be like something to someone than everything to everyone.
So I like the focused approach we can take with these kind of original content
series.
And then for us, we kind of have this tertiary audience, which is the Sales
force ecosystem.
Because we're purpose built for Salesforce customers, our founders all worked
at Salesforce.
Our team is Salesforce certified.
We were like, how can we create a show that's geared towards the incredible
community that Salesforce has built?
And so the guests on the show will be Salesforce executives, Salesforce alumni,
leaders of Salesforce ISVs.
It will be trailblazers talking about this incredible ecosystem that Salesforce
has built.
And for us, we're always attached to the hip for Salesforce.
So it helps us just connect with that audience and kind of keep the thought
leadership conversation going around that incredible kind of trailblazer
ecosystem.
So each show has a different kind of different segments, different audiences,
different takeaways.
And I don't want to do one big show that tries to do all of those things at the
same time, because I think it will fall flat.
So how do you create really curated content for your different personas?
And then we'll want to push it out to them in different ways.
So it's discoverable for one audience and it's elevated for one audience,
unless so for the other.
So it's, I think, a good problem to have to have too much content.
We can then also figure out how to make a bite-sized, how to repurpose it, how
to make it evergreen.
So I'm super excited that we're going to have three shows.
Yeah, I would add to that I think that marketing is going towards the sharpest
B2B marketing teams are going to have a portfolio approach.
And I think that that's always how we viewed marketing, but we didn't view
content as a portfolio approach.
Maybe like, okay, if we have 700 articles on the website that there's 50 on
this, 15 on this, whatever.
But this idea that like stand-alone shows can be literally stand-alone, I think
is something that's like really new and exciting.
And I think that what you are doing is really cool in that way.
Well, Ditto, you're a huge part of it, so thank you.
Alright, let's get to the dust up.
This is where we talk about healthy tension, whether that's with your board,
your sales team, your competitors, or anyone else, even Craig.
Have you had a memorable dust up in your career?
Yeah, that's a great question.
I mean, sales and marketing is always the dust up, right?
I mean, that's not necessarily true, but how can you keep your marketing
leadership and your sales leadership aligned?
I feel lucky that we have a great CRO here, and I feel like he and I are in
lockstep.
But I've been at past companies where that is not the case. Sales wants
pipeline pipeline pipeline.
They think it comes out of nowhere, and marketing knows the ins and outs of how
you generate quality pipeline, what channels it comes from.
They know that it's a longer game, things like inbound or events.
It's kind of a long tail there.
It's not quick twitch, you can't pour money into it and expect pipeline to come
out the other end.
So I'm kind of thinking back just to past companies where there's been that
healthy tension.
And in terms of other dust ups, I'm trying to think not many dust ups with
Craig.
He and I have worked together for 12 years, my CEO at four different companies.
So I love being able to work with somebody or a team of people for a long time
because we can anticipate what the other person is thinking.
We feel comfortable challenging each other, knowing that we're all friends, but
we're trying to create the best product possible.
And so that's something that's really unique is how long our kind of core team
has worked together.
But I think it works because there is just this ease of working with one
another that I really value.
So yeah, I wish I had a spicier story for you than that.
Oh, that's all right.
There's not a lot of spicy stories for you, unfortunately.
You're far too good at your job and far too nice.
Let's get to quick hits.
These are quick questions and quick answers, just like how quickly you can talk
to somebody if you go to Qualified.com.
Qualified is the best, as you know, Maura, because you're our best friends.
And our listeners can go to Qualified.com to learn more.
You can chat with somebody today, learn about all the cool stuff that we've
talked about.
The pipeline cloud is here.
Just go check it out. Go to Qualified.com.
Quick hits.
Maura, are you ready?
I'm ready.
Ready is for me.
Number one.
If you weren't in marketing or business at all, what would you be doing?
I'd be a teacher.
I love kids and I always thought I could go one of two ways, which is like try
and be a CMO or be a teacher.
I have two young kids at home, so they keep me plenty busy and I actually don't
know if I truly have the patience to be a teacher.
I think it'd be much harder than my job.
But that's always been where my head's been at.
What's subject and what grade?
I would teach art for second graders.
That's pretty good.
Do you have a hidden talent or skill that's not on your resume?
My hidden talent or skill is I have a passion for reality television and could
tell you about any character that's on any terrible reality TV show.
That's pretty good.
I think I have something similar for TV characters, but not of the reality
variety.
What's a non-marketing hobby that maybe sort of kind of makes you a better
marketer?
Yeah, that's a great question.
For me, I didn't prepare enough for these questions.
Yeah, that's why they're quick hits.
No prep needed.
I think that being a mom makes me a better marketer because I have learned how
to delegate.
I have learned how to be creative.
I have learned how to deal with different personalities.
I also am calmer because I can't be caught up in the stress and chaos all the
time because being a CMO and being a mom of two young boys, you just have to
kind of be calm or everything will crumble.
I think that's made me a better marketer because I've learned to not sweat the
small stuff and just try and focus on big picture success.
Yeah, keep calm and carry on is quite literally the motto for the mom CMO
hybrid.
What advice would you give to a first time CMO who's trying to figure out their
demand strategy?
Yeah, that's a great question.
I kind of come up from a product marketing customer marketing background and
demand gen was newer to me when I joined qualified since I was kind of marketer
one at the beginning many years ago.
I had to figure out demand gen as I went.
I was getting our ad campaign stood up.
I was getting our sales force dashboards built and I'm so glad I had that
experience because I learned so much and have so much respect for anybody who
has that as their day to day job.
I would say to start small and test different channels.
Don't go all in on one channel at the beginning.
Figure out what works from a channel perspective from a paid perspective and
kind of start to turn the dials slowly so that you can evolve and not be
committed just to one direction from a demand gen perspective.
So that would be my advice.
Favorite book TV show podcast something like that that's non business related.
Or it could be other than demand gen visionaries.
That's right.
My favorite podcast I listened to the daily often.
I listened to armchair expert often in terms of TV shows I can't look away from
all the Silicon Valley shows happening right now about the downfall and upris
ings of different companies.
So that's been what's kind of been occupying me as of late.
So yeah, well, a well rounded mix if you will.
That's it.
That's all we got for today.
It's obviously just so great to finally have you on the show.
Now we got to bring you back after we hear all the cool stuff coming out about
this pipeline campaign.
We got tons and tons of stuff qualified stuff coming out in the not too distant
future.
Any final thoughts anything to plug?
No, just check out qualified.
You guys do a lot of that advertising for us.
So thank you, Ian.
It was really fun to be here.
I'm so proud of this show you've helped create and it was fun to be on the
other side.
I can't believe how much this show has grown since it was just an idea a few
short years ago.
So thank you for all of the work you pour into it.
Thank you.
You know, truly we could never have done any of this without you.
But you're an awesome partner and it's been quite the journey and many more
miles to go.
Mora, thanks again and we will talk soon.
See you next time.
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