managing against impossible demands: balancing growth, ai, and sanity

The CMO job has never been harder — and most people are sugarcoating it. Economic pressure. AI disruption. Sky-high expectations with half the resources. This week on Digital Banter, Drew Neisser, Founder of CMO Huddles, joins us to get brutally honest about what CMOs (and marketer leaders in general) are really facing today. From chasing quick wins without sacrificing long-term growth, to integrating AI without burning out teams — we break down the new rules for surviving (and thriving) in modern marketing leadership.

Podcast Transcript

Andy: [00:00:00] What’s up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Digital Banter. Joining us today is Drew Nier. Founder of CMO Huddles, which is a community of CMOs four 50 plus. I think you said Drew kind of solving real world problems right now, right? You bet. Yes. Excited to be here. Thanks for having

Drew: me.

Andy: Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, we’re gonna get into a lot today about CMOs and I think broadly speaking, marketing leadership and what they have to deal with and kind of what you talked about in kind of our brainstorm meeting, you know, managing against impossible demands. But before we get into all that, James has a question that he always likes to ask guests before we get into the meat of the conversation.

James: All [00:01:00] right. So I have this, uh, philosophy that I feel like nobody, nobody, uh, wakes up and says that they want to get into B2B marketing. And I know that that’s kind of been your background for a very long time. So I want to hear a little bit about your story. So start with think way back. What did you want to be when you grew up, when you were a kid, and, okay.

Story from there of how you fell into B2B?

Drew: Yes. Uh, so as a kid I had a very specific goal. I wanted to be a professional ping pong player and a spy. And so I could go to China as a professional ping pong player and really be a spy. Um, so I thought that would be a, a very cool, uh, thing. So marketing was a backup.

Yeah.

Andy: Wow. Yeah. You’re getting a lot of interesting stories here. We had a preacher, we have now a ping pong spy.

Drew: Yeah, that was, uh, it was, it was complicated. And then when I was done with that, I had a whole career planned as a, as a standup. But I wa didn’t wanna do standup until I was late in my [00:02:00] life, because I wouldn’t have cared if anybody laughed.

And chances are they wouldn’t have. So, but I always thought that would be fun too. Do you do standup? I do not. No. And it’s a good thing I can

James: see it. No,

Drew: it’s a good

James: thing.

Drew: Yeah. No, I’m more of an improv guy than I am a standup guy.

Andy: Well, that’s what we’re doing here, so that’s what we’re doing. There we go.

All right, so let’s hop in this a little bit. So, drew, out of your four 50 CMOs along with your entire career of working with marketing leaders, especially in the B2B space, you’ve kind of cultivated so many insights and experiences. But if you were to sum up the mood that exists among market leaders today, like.

Be,

Drew: you know, I realized, by the way, I didn’t ask James answer James question about how he got into B2B and why, and it is important part of that. I wanna answer that first and then I’ll give you that word. Okay? Is that all right? Yes, that’s fair. James, I feel like I got, did did you a disservice in the, in the answer.

So. At a point, and Andy remembers these days, he used to run an agency called Renegade and way back when [00:03:00] we did both B2B and B2C, and at some point it just occurred to me that the bar was so much lower on B2B than B2C. It was just easier to be outstanding. I didn’t wanna compete with. Massive creative agencies and, and so we were little renegade doing renegade things and it really felt renegade to those, um, B2B, so that’s why it was just easier to be a renegade and B2B.

Um, now to your question, some of the mood, uh, I first wanna preface this by saying CMOs in general, marketing leaders in general are the most optimistic people you will ever meet. Having said that, if I had to sum it up in one word, it would be painful.

James: Painful.

Drew: Painful. That is the mood right now. It is painful.

James: What is the biggest pain that they’re dealing with right now?

Drew: It is the soon the triple threat of sort of the general market uncertainty, the transformation of [00:04:00] technology and this. Uh, the rise of, of PE and, and this vortex of expectations changing, uh, from used to get a little time. Now it’s, you know, fix everything.

Yesterday.

James: Let’s talk about the PE thing. ’cause I, I found this super interesting when we were talking earlier, my. Hypothesis was always that venture capital was the biggest pain in the butt as a CMO. And it sounds like what you’ve found is that’s actually not the case. So can you kind of dive into that a bit?

Drew: Yeah, I mean, so if you’re VC funding, you’re, you know, seed rounds, A, B, C, what you’re really trying to do is find out is if there’s a market for this product or is there a fit out there. So you emphasize growth in building a bigger net than you do. Uh, ebitda, right? I mean, if you think about an Amazon, they weren’t profitable for years and years and years, and there were a lot of other companies who sort of took that approach [00:05:00] and still do With vc.

Capital growth is the first goal. Now, if you get into a later series, the VCs are saying, sure, we should have growth and uh, income. But PE firms are coming in. Their goal is ebitda. ’cause remember, they are looking for return now. They want growth too, but first is, and so, so much of their playbook involves cutting costs in order to gussy up those balance sheets.

So it looks like this is a pretty little pig, isn’t it?

James: Plus say like on the marketing side, as a leader, I think there’s like pros and cons to it, right? So like on the venture capital side, it’s like, great, you have a lot of money, you can do a lot of testing, you’re pushing towards growth. Uh, kind of, uh, until it comes back to bite you is how I would look at it.

’cause we’ve seen many venture capital funded companies. Scale, scale, scale, scale. And then. The question gets asked of like, how do we hit profitability? And then everything gets wiped out. At least on the PE [00:06:00] side. From what I’ve seen and the stuff that we’ve dealt with as an agency specifically, it’s like we know what we’re working with and as an agency we almost like prefer to work with those PE companies because they’re one working with money that they actually have.

So that means that any scope or contract with them, and if it’s working like they’re gonna keep. Doing it versus vc, like, I just feel like you could get the blood pulled at any point. And

Drew: again, I think there’s a couple of differences. One is that VC companies often are not in that stage of, of profitable growth and they’re still trying to figure out how to get there.

So, fair enough, they’re probably, a lot of ’em are too small to have an agency like yours. Um, and PE firms recognize the value of, to some extent, and again. I think it’s really important to not universally say there’s this mythical PE firm and they all behave the same way. Because I do know some CMOs who are working for [00:07:00] PE firms who are happy, most are miserable, but there are a few that are happy.

So I, I wanna make sure and they can deliver value. But I think the thing that I would wa dive into is. There could be great partners of the PE firm, and let’s say the CMO understands the thesis. Why did this PAE firm buy this company? They bought it because they thought this was a problem. And if we fix that problem, then we could sell it for more money than we paid for it.

Very right. So let’s assume the CMO is smart enough to know what that is. There is this issue of the little. Uh, PE drones that go in and look at every single report and then say, we wanna look at 200 pages of reports and they take 70% of the CMOs time is justifying things like keyword buys in cost per class.

That’s when it gets ridiculous. Because we’re, you know, we’re looking to optimize at the 0.001% of something where CMOs should be [00:08:00] optimizing at the big scale, not in fractions of a percent, but they should be thinking about how do we transform the business to the point where we’re looking at 15% growth and margins or better, and we’re doing some big leaps, not this, uh uh, squeeze that.

Right, because of the time and return on investment. So that’s where the real problem is, is in the, the level of detail that they often face and the time suck that it creates.

Andy: So using that then, as a jumping off point, like in some of your conversations with huddles, like how are, how are the best CMOs kind of managing those opposite direction, pulling conversations and, and responsibilities, I guess?

Drew: Well, I. So. There’s a few answers. One is they get into a situation I know and I can share. Uh, it was A-A-C-M-O who was at a billion dollar company [00:09:00] that had been merged with another very large company. Um, and I. The, basically the PE firm said, okay, we’re changing the name. We’re launch announcing the launchment.

You have one month to integrate everything, and then you need to grow everything by 50% and we’re cutting your budget by 50%. They spent about a month in it and they said, quit. I can’t do this. I can’t. I’m literally, it’s going to kill me. So many that I know that are really, really good quit because they can find better jobs where there is some realistic connection between input and output, where they can actually achieve, uh, the goals that have been set before them.

So that’s part one. I don’t like that as a solution. I mean, I’d much rather see A CMO try to figure it out, uh, and work with rational minds be, you know, there is, in an ideal world, the CEO has this strength to say, no, this person’s really important. They help is [00:10:00] strategically driving the business. They’re not just the marketer, their business partner, they’re doing all these and they’re providing a little air cover.

But if it’s a CEO who doesn’t understand marketing, which is 80% of them, and the CEO says, well, if you won’t hit those numbers, I’ll just find someone who do will. And so what you find in those situations is they swap out the CMO, they swap out the CRO, and everybody set back 18 months because the knowledge that just walked out the door is incredible.

So it doesn’t work. But there’s a notion that these are interchangeable parts.

Andy: No, I mean, we see it all the time. I think, you know, combined between all of us, what we, we would say an average CCMO lifespan is two years or less. Like it just rotates over for all of the different reasons that you just said, drew.

Drew: Yeah, and again, I, I think it’s a little bit longer than that and I also wanna make sure that folks realize that I know a number of CMOs who do the three years and then they voluntarily move on. Because they [00:11:00] have a year one, a year two and a year three plan, but they don’t really have a year four plan.

And so they’re fine with that. And I think that does, uh, uh, and then there are some who are churning at a year and, and just that’s, that’s, that’s a lose for everybody.

Andy: Right. Exactly. And it, it’s a lose, lose, lose because of all the partners that exist out there who are going in one direction, hopefully.

And now all of a sudden I have to change directions on a consistent basis.

Drew: I’m gonna let you in a little secret. PE firms don’t care about you. Agency people. Yeah, I know. We’re very concerned. You are Collateral damage. My friends,

James: they, uh, barely care about the cmo as we’re finding out here. They don’t care about the cmo, really.

I

Andy: mean, if you go to their site, you’re gonna see a people first. Cultural. About US, Paige, right? We

Drew: are a people first PE firm. Yes,

Andy: we are. Yes, we are. Everybodys people

James: first.

Andy: Uh, okay. So when we think [00:12:00] about all of that, let’s, let’s throw a wrench into this entire conversation and bring ai, let’s bring AI immediately into it.

Okay? And the shiny object that influences literally everything A CMO probably has to deal with from product adoption and feature requests and releases through to, to your point before transforming the internal operations of the business. Like what are the things that are standing out to you? In the CMO landscape from an AI perspective right now.

Drew: Okay, so let’s, let’s work on the bad news first and get that out of the way. So I literally, and I’m working on this, it’ll probably be in my post tomorrow, uh, my, uh, Saturday LinkedIn rant, uh, CEO said to their CMO, uh, you should be able to cut your staff by 80% because of ai. Just like that, off you go, see you later.

Cut that step by 80%. So that is in line with this expectation that, oh my [00:13:00] gosh, everything can be automated. We don’t need people and let’s just get rid of them. And, and it’s just so funny because never in the history of software, and this may be different, has actually a set of software that promised to reduce staff actually done so it just moved them to another room.

Right. And so, and so, I do think this will be different. I, but I do think that also the human aspect of marketing, uh, is not, is, is not to be underestimated and should become more important. So, um, I do not think that a hundred percent genic world for, for marketing will actually produce better outcomes.

Having said that, there’s a lot of opportunity that AI is creating for CMOs and so I have a, we have a vision we talk about a lot is. You wanna see as a CMO, you want to be a chief, you want to be a seat at the table. There is a problem and perception of marketing alone as [00:14:00] that, like, oh, you’re the marketing person.

You’re, you know, you’re the arts and crafts group. That part of marketing is what they think of and they think of that’s fine, and they have opinions. And what CMO wants to do is have a business seat at the table, they business person first. The easiest way to do that is not to be just the marketer. So you’re, we call the CMO Plus.

So AI, because so many other departments are slow with this. I know a number of CMOs who are leading the AI initiatives at their company, and that’s amazing. And what it means is they get to set the agenda for the company, but they do that by being really smart about how they implement AI in their departments.

And so let me, can, can I keep going?

Andy: Yeah, you be going.

Drew: Oh my God. Because I think it’s amazing and it’s a transformation in the last year between what, how people were doing it last year and how they’re starting to think about it this year. Last year it was [00:15:00] go play. This year it’s about strategy again, it’s always been about strategy.

We just didn’t think of it that way. Right? So. What CMOs are doing to try to take the lead on this is they’re benchmarking every single process that they have in their, in their, in their workflows. Every single process, whether it’s, uh, a research report, a blog content, a go to market campaign, every single one of those things they’re looking at.

And if they look at all of them and they say, oh my God, this is taking 700 man hours a month. How many man hours could we reduce if we introduce AI into some aspect or built a workflow tool? So that’s, and once you start talking about that in language, that, uh, suddenly a CFO will pay attention to CEO, pay attention because we said here is the, uh, [00:16:00] desire to output.

You know, we’re, we’re doing a strategic campaign, it’s gonna touch these kind of people, it’s gonna take this long to do it, and we do it over and over and over again. AI is really good at fixing repetitive task. So they’re benchmarking. Nobody was benchmarking last year. They’re benchmarking this year.

They’re looking at the things where, and, and then simultaneously you’re saying, what are our top 10 strategic initiatives that we wanna do this year? And. What could AI do to help us get to those? So you have sort of our big processes that are time consuming and we have our big strategies that we wanna implement.

And you can look at the two of those and you sort of say, wow, okay, there’s some intersection there. I. Uh, and then AI becomes a strategic weapon, not a tactical thing that allows you to create content faster.

James: Do you think the focus is more on how can we get more done, [00:17:00] or is it more on cutting costs from, I’ll say like the overall leadership perspective, C-M-C-E-O, to CMO?

Like what’s. What are they focusing on in that conversation? Well,

Drew: in that one conversation I alluded to earlier, it’s just about efficiency. It’s like, do more with less, right? Yeah. And so they’re not accepting a trade off. They want more content and they want you to do it 80% faster with 80% fewer people.

Right? That’s this magical thinking that, that, that. That is happening. So it’s both. It’s not an or. It’s why the job’s getting so hard. I want more of everything, and I want it faster, and I want it cheaper with less people.

Andy: Yeah. But I feel like it’s almost like what you just described is also trying to reframe the ask of the CEO where it’s, yes, there’s a reduction in headcount, but more importantly there’s not an increase in headcount if you’re creating efficiencies.

Right. So long term, yeah, you’re saving costs and hopefully hitting the growth at trajectory at the same time. Which to your [00:18:00] point too, is increasing ebitda.

Drew: So, I mean, I think that the staffing of a CMOs group is gonna change. Sure. And, and that you might need fewer. Uh, sort of lower level people, but I think you’re gonna need more if we, if we say that sort of the genius of the CMO is connecting dots between customer and product and tech and company and culture, they’re sort of the keeper of the customer in the market.

It’s the machine can’t do that, right? Because there’s judgment involved, there’s differentiation involved. And it’s not just the CMO, it’s at every stage of it. Because at some point in time we’re gonna look and they say collectively, are we building a cumulative thing that is larger than the sum of it, you know, is bigger than the sum of its parts A AKA reputation, right?

And bots aren’t gonna think about [00:19:00] reputation. They’re gonna think about this ab, this test worked better than this test. So do it. And, and, and we know that sometimes you don’t just choose the most efficient email, uh, because it’s in, not in line with the brand.

James: Absolutely.

Drew: So, and those judgment calls are, you’re going to need layers of judgment on, on every aspect of that that AI touches.

James: So how do you think that’s gonna affect team makeup? Because I like, let’s kind of trickle this all the way down ’cause it’s something that we think about all the time as an agency now. And to be honest, I’m right with you as far as like, I wonder what junior level roles in any organization are gonna look like in the future and like thinking deep into the future if that doesn’t exist.

Like how are you gonna get into the strategic. Like, how do you develop into A CMO if you have no place to start? Right. I know, and [00:20:00]

Drew: that’s a great question and I, again, I think we could overestimate the impact of this all of this way too quickly. Um, and it’s, I. It’s, it’s sort of like, oh, we’re gonna get rid of all our BDRs because we won’t need it, because we’ll have a bot.

And then yet there’ll be a bunch of leads in the pipeline and they need to be qualified. And nobody wants to talk to a bot on an outbound. So who’s gonna move those along? Probably a human right. Who’s gonna connect the random dots? Uh, that, uh. Uh, you know that, and yes, again, you could train these machines.

They can do a lot of these things and I do think that anybody coming outta school who doesn’t know you know, how to use these tools is gonna be at a disadvantage. But, so if you said so from an agency standpoint, uh, I think you’re gonna need creative people. Uh, and [00:21:00] you’re always gonna need creative people in that, creative thinkers who can connect dots that probably shouldn’t have been connected, right?

That’s the part the machines are not very good at. There’s also just, I mean, ultimately there is gonna be this human factor and, and with every tech trend, there’s a human counter trend. And, and that’s an gonna be another part I important part of this. Uh, so I, I, I don’t have the answer to how these people are gonna, junior people are gonna get started.

I just know that junior people embracing these tools can do incredible things that they couldn’t do before. Like, suddenly everybody could code, you know, if I were, you know, coming outta college, I’d be vibe, coding, all sorts of things, right?

James: I love it. Vibe coding. That was, that was Andy back in the day.

What did we call it? Cowboy coding. I was a cowboy coder. Whenever you would try to like do anything.

Drew: Yeah. Our developer

Andy: hated me because I would just screw [00:22:00] his stuff.

Drew: But now it’s like, it’s not only cool. It’s amazing. Yeah, so I, I think it’s. It’s gonna create new jobs, it’s gonna, it, they’re gonna be different jobs and it’s gonna be you up to you to think about, oh, you know, if we put these things together, maybe we could do this.

And uh, and there’s so many different areas where AI isn’t being applied. I mean, marketing still spends a lot of time thinking about sales enablement. Marketing still thinks a lot of time when you bring marketing into the big pitch. We finally got the big meeting for the million dollar contract. You can’t send bots in there.

The bot’s gonna help you put that presentation together, but I don’t know, ultimately there’s gonna be some people in the room and they gotta represent the organization and they gotta be able to articulate, uh, a story and they gotta look like a big, happy family that isn’t a bunch of robots. Well, to your

James: point about alternative trends too, though, like, events are making a comeback, right?

That is the most hu like, [00:23:00] ’cause with all of Covid stuff, like people have a real desire to interact with other people and I think that that’s gonna. Continue to take off.

Drew: Yeah, I mean, I was at an event yesterday. I’ve been to a lot of events in the last month, and you’re absolutely right, they’ve all been, uh, full.

Uh, and the one event was that I was at, was four, uh, marketers, to marketers who were, um, just educating that was what they were doing. Well, you know, in theory you could have done that online, but. It was so much more fun and meaningful. And, and, and again, they allowed people to come together and chat and they forced interactions.

It was, it was great. And it was half day and

James: yeah.

Drew: Uh, so yes. And uh, again, a machine could make that more effective perhaps by looking at the content. But there was a presenter there who was fantastic. Just fantastic. And like, personally, that gets me excited. I go, oh my [00:24:00] God, he was so good. I gotta, I gotta raise my bar.

I gotta, I gotta get better. ’cause this guy was so inspiring. He was so good. So there’s lots of things that come out of this stuff. So I agree with you. There will be, uh, the more bots we interact with, the more humans we’re gonna wanna hang out with. Yeah.

Andy: Going back to what you were saying about the CMO and having to.

We’re not having to, but having the opportunity to shape so much of the organization outside of marketing and then the AI aspect of that. Like what about the downstream kind of influence and impact of that on team building and culture and having to really shape that narrative so that it’s not about like.

Jobs being lost or taken over, but I guess repurposing responsibilities almost.

Drew: Yeah, it’s really interesting topic and so [00:25:00] I, it’s, it’s funny, I. If you SI definitely am in favor of CMOs obviously getting, working with the CEO and the board to develop the vision and the mission and the purpose of the company, and being able to communicate those to the, uh, the rest of the organization and bring excitement and energy so people feel like they’re doing something that’s, that’s important and worthwhile.

And that they’re proud of the company that they work for. All of those are good things. And funny enough, one of the things in our quick wins, um, uh, first 90 days quick wins is I always say the first week, do an employee survey. Right? ’cause you wanna get them, make them feel like they’re part of this process.

Um, and you learn a lot and, and you have an action to show for your effort. I am not keen necessarily on. The CO saying, Hey, I’m the chief culture officer, or I’m also, I am doing internal comms or so because [00:26:00] we’re, we’re trying to get credibility for our business acumen and connect getting closer to revenue and like employee retention is important as it is, and I talk about it in my book and I believe that employees first companies do better than companies that aren’t.

I don’t think you’ll keep your job. You’re not more likely to keep your job because you’ve taken this over. The perception of the board will not change. The perception of the board will change when you are talking about, this is our win rate today, and this is our pricing power. Today, when we talk about win rate, we’re winning one in five.

Okay? And we only get, and we’re only at bat at 20% of the deals out there. You can then go back to, well, why are we not winning more? And almost always it comes down to reputation.

Andy: Yeah. Not features. Yeah. I was [00:27:00] thinking more so about the, like through the lens of like internal marketing versus external marketing.

Drew: Yes. I, so there’s two questions that. Internal marketing is incredibly important and is incredibly valuable, and if you can build your employees up to be advocates and they can go out and express their joy at working in the company, it’s incredibly powerful. I believe it is actually a marketing strategy.

What we were talking about is how do you secure your role and enable yourself to be able to make the major transformations that you need to make at an organization? You don’t necessarily get that. By talking about those things. Sure, yeah. Right. You, because I know and you know that, uh, happier employees equal, happier customers, equal more revenue, start with revenue and work your way back.

James: Yeah. I mean, it takes a long time to prove out that [00:28:00] probably more than right. Two years.

Drew: And, and look, you know, you could show them, look, if, if you can. If you have a stronger reputation, this is a business value, and you can weigh this in and it shows up. If you have a stronger reputation that your costs of recruiting are lower than your competitors, that’s a competitive advantage.

Your, your retention, uh, your turnover rate is lower than your competitor. That is a competitive advantage because typically keeping employees longer is good for, um, you know. The, the company, particularly like if you have salespeople or, or technology experts or something like that, you know, if they feel really good about the company, they’ll, they’ll wanna stay in the current environment of more with less today.

That is not what I would wanna hang my hat on. If I was a CMO. I’m not saying it isn’t really important and right. And if we were just building a company and we didn’t have to worry about the investors, [00:29:00] then I would absolutely say employees, then customers, then prospects as priorities.

James: So I have a, I got a question to dig deeper into that.

Okay. Does it matter where the revenue comes from? So example, focusing on net new logo acquisition, call it versus upsell, cross sell, being more involved in like product marketing,

Drew: that type of stuff.

James: First

Drew: of all. Really good question. And it, the answer is, it depends on the company. Uh, and I think it depends on the current environment because of the uncertainty that a lot of businesses are seeing, it’s impossible to forecast or revising their forecast every single week.

Uh, net new customers is really hard, so, uh, but upsell and cross sell. Much, much easier because you already are a pro vendor in the system and so forth. So the, I think everybody will tell you that 2024 was a really hard year to [00:30:00] get net new, that deals took longer, uh, uh, to close or didn’t close, and more deals didn’t close.

And no, and nobody bought anything. It wasn’t like they lost, they lost 10 nothing. So, and right now I think Q1 is, is exactly like that as well. So anyway, the, the answer is if you are lucky enough to have an installed base and a product line that you can upsell and cross sell and, and keep right, retention matters, then, uh, and.

In those cases is the CMO have it play an active role in retention, upsell, and cross sell. Right. And a lot of times they don’t, which is unfortunate.

James: Where does that fall usually? Just like purely Cs. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense.

Drew: And Cs sometimes are really, you know, Don, don’t, we know the customer, you know, the a saying, I got this, don’t leave ’em.

I know who they [00:31:00] are and what they’re doing. And well that, you know, it’s silly because, uh, 25% of those folks, those, uh, users and, and buyers are churning every year. Not that they’re the customer is the, the, the brand name is leaving, but then individual is leaving.

James: I mean, that’s a thing that like I frankly, I think AI could ruin very quickly.

I think that in, in terms of what? Like customer service, like, I think the, that is being replaced there a lot with, I mean, I’ll give you examples of just stuff that we deal with, like working with like Google reps and Facebook reps. If you don’t spend a certain amount now that you have to talk to a robot for eight conversations before you can get any help, and it’s like.

For, I’m sure for some advertisers, especially on like Facebook side, like they’ve said, enough is enough. We’re going somewhere else. And I think that the more that companies try to roll out that kind of stuff, it’s going to get worse. ’cause that’s something that people [00:32:00] do want human connection. They want somebody who can help them.

Drew: And I think it’s situational, and I think it’s somewhat demographic, but not completely. So, uh, interesting thing, and it, and it’s still true today, I, uh, one of the members of our community works, uh, with a very large global call center company. And you talk about antiquated wait, someone at the other end, every single touch, whether they called to complaint or com for an explanation represents an uptick in, uh, reputation and likely to repurchase.

Whether they called for a complaint or not, the human touch in that circumstance matters, and I don’t think that’s gonna change. At the same time, I will tell you that one of the low hanging fruits out there for CMOs in their first 90 days is to quickly improve. The website experience, you know, we’ve got something on renegade marketing.com or media brand.

We, we [00:33:00] installed a, a little question banner called, uh, powered by web list.ai. And that banner, you could ask anything on that website. You could say, Hey, why doesn’t an elephant have five legs? And it’ll find a way to connect that question to some content on our website. And so it helps content get discovered.

So. Uh, I do think that there’s a role and then when we’re testing another, uh, technology, uh, sales speak, uh, that will is a better bot. So all I can tell you it because it’s built on every bit of information on our website, um, and it’s progressive and it populates it with questions and it anticipate sort of where, where you might go.

Um, and I think that there are times where self-service is just fine. Right. I’m just learning about the company. I wanna know a little bit more, gimme the answers I’m looking for. And you can’t find them through the architecture of the website.

James: Yeah. [00:34:00]

Drew: And this is another level, well beyond what Drift and, and those kinds of sort of conversational bots.

It’s sort of the next generation of that. Uh, and I think that’s gonna work really well in a lot of circumstances as you’re doing your sort of explorations out there.

Andy: What else falls on your quick wins 90 days list?

Drew: So, uh, again, what are we trying to do in that first NI 90 days? What we’re trying to do is earn some credibility to buy you time to fix the big problems, and usually if sales are slow.

It’s not a marketing problem, it’s a go to market problem, right? There’s a product, there’s a service, there’s a, there’s some issues. Those issues are not gonna be solved in the first 90 days, but you need to identify those in the first 90 days. So why you’re doing that? You need to have, you should be AB testing landing pages.

You should be AB testing your landing. Uh, you know, you should be [00:35:00] installing things like the web list.ai that could be up and running in a day, right? You can, you can do some things like that. Uh, you can make sure that. You can figure out are you, you know, is your SEO strategy, right? And s or GEO strategy working at all.

Um, you know, do you even have a GEO strategy, right? And so you’re finding the things. There’s a, we have a long list. It’s like three pages of things that you can do that in the first 90 days that will answer what the heck have you been doing? Among those is meet every day with the sales head of sales.

There is no longer a moment, stop talking about marketing sourced. Nobody cares. Just put that aside. We have one. We report on the same numbers. You know, we’ve got pipeline, we’ve got close rate. Those are really great, and figure out where the problems are in that work with the sales folks. Think about [00:36:00] war rooms for the big clients where you and your, your team and the sales team are, are, are talking every day against the same sort of language and definitions.

That seems to be an interesting one. I. Marketer has one definition for, you know, what’s a sales qualified opportunity? Oh yeah. Those kinds of things. Those things we gotta fix, right? So there’s a lot of definitional things. There’s a lot of little mini tweaks that you can do. Again, all of which is time to fix the bigger problem.

And I, I see. Uh, so the corollary that says that a lot of CMOs go in and they, in the first six months, they use all their political capital to change the brand. And as much as I know that a lot of brands should be changed, I think that is the absolute worst thing that they can do.

James: That was gonna be my question.

I was gonna say, so the rebrand isn’t on your list.

Drew: Oh my God. And I just, I, [00:37:00] it’s just, I almost can always predict that CMOs gonna be gone in a year.

James: I think of three examples in my head of that exact situation without naming names or companies.

Drew: And it’s like you can’t, you know, I, if I take a coat of paint and paint up an old barn, it’s still an old barn, you know?

It’s just, there’s nothing. So, and look, I’m a big believer in getting brand right, although, funny enough, we. Stop using that term. In CMO huddles, we like to use the term reputation ’cause executives understand that they go there with a bunch of their friends and, you know, they’re at the country club. And if they have a reputation as a, as a, uh, sandbagger, they don’t like that.

They understand reputation. There’s one other thing that, uh, I think A CMO could do in the first 90 days that isn’t on my list yet, but we’ll add it to it, which is. Work with the CFO to understand [00:38:00] your pricing power. And this is a, so I I’m the two jewels that I thought about in that, that have risen through other really smart people that I’ve, that I’ve been talking to besides you two, uh, is if you look at win rates and you look at pricing power, you’re talking the language of the business and typically you can find where the issue are.

So let’s talk pricing power. Pricing power, uh, which I’m, you got rentals wrap and you got generic foil. Which one are you gonna buy? Nine outta 10 times rentals wrap. Yeah. Why I.

Andy: Because you’ve heard of ’em. Reputation. I don’t about you guys, but I go for the cheap stuff. So

Drew: there you go. But you know what, in that particular case, the cheap foil often isn’t as good.

There’s a reason it’s cheaper. It it breaks, it tears worse. It’s true.

James: That is very true. With foil I, cheaper

Drew: foil is one of those kinda things where it’s not as generic as you think. Uh, and you know, here I am talking about the reputation of it. So reputation [00:39:00] equals pricing power. Marketing equals reputation equals pricing power.

So you go to and look at the company and say, okay, fourth quarter we’re trying to enter our numbers. How much discounting did we have to do? That’s one. Number two, when was the last time we took a price increase in? How did it stick against our current customers?

Those two questions and work with your CFO and say, oh, marketing equals pricing power. What would pricing power mean to, if we could raise our price in 95% of our customers today, what would that mean to our ebitda? Yeah. Now we’ve earned the right to say, okay, well how do we measure reputation? What’s that gonna look like?

How do you build reputation? How do demand and brand activities work together to build reputation? Why do we need to have customer success and sales and marketing all at the table and product to talk [00:40:00] about this and, and, you know, work out? Where are you not? You know, what are the components that deliver pricing power?

I mean, funny, I heard today that Salesforce’s total revenue exceeds that of all other marketing technology sold. I’m

James: not

Drew: surprised.

James: Yeah.

Drew: Eric, talk about pricing power, HubSpot.

James: I don’t know.

Drew: I mean, and if people don’t even like it,

James: yeah.

Drew: But they’re just so well entrenched and it’s, uh, they, they have it. So, you know, there’s some reputational strength in there somewhere.

James: Well, there’s two sides to that too though, right? There’s the, how can we increase it and then the, it’s already too high. I can’t tell you how many clients we’ve taken on in the years that are a challenger brand that is more expensive and offers less than their competition, and they wonder what the problem is, right?

Well, yeah,

Drew: the market usually [00:41:00] is pretty smart about that. Yeah. Um, yeah, it’s, it’s funny. It is a tricky thing. I mean, I think the retinols rep, uh, is a good example because the cheaper brands are in fact not as strong. Yeah. They’re not as good. So in that case, price equals. Um, not just perceived value, but real value.

I think there are cases in a lot of brands, and that’s more true with consumer than business, but there are a lot of brands that have perceived value that’s higher than

James: their actual

Drew: value.

James: Well, even like you were talking about Drift before and all of these other tools that are very similar or better now and are cheaper in a lot of those situations, like that’s a huge shakeup in that space alone.

Drew: Yeah. And, and again, this, where it comes down to it is how hard is it to extract? There’s a problem once you’re down the HubSpot or sales, it’s just a pain of change is so high, right? So, you know, they built a nice little moat [00:42:00] around their business, and I think that challenge agencies have is they have no moats.

James: I got, I got one more question. That I think is a very relevant to this. What are your opinion on the whole creating a category thing that people are doing to try to, I think, to try to increase their perceived value to,

Drew: um, it’s a great, it’s another really rich, uh, thing, and, and so first of all, I, I have a definition of what it means to have created a category.

You are a category win. There are people whose jobs actually sort of depend on your category. So if we take Tableau when they were trying to create the data visualization category, there were people who were data visualizers, take Marketo, who sort of took, you know, marketing on it. There were, you know, Marketo ones, they were actually that.

So. One, there’s a, uh, uh, there are people whose jobs are, and livelihoods are dependent on that. Two, [00:43:00] the analysts actually recognize you as a category, which means three. You have competitors. Okay, so that’s, if we define, that’s what it. What, uh, a category, uh, means, uh, and, you know, you have a category, is the pursuit of category creation worth the energy it takes to d And so the answer is I think every brand has to be differentiated.

Every, you have to find your point of differentiation. If you are going to define yourself as a new category, you are going to have to invest your money accordingly. Right? Absolutely. Uh, and you’re gonna have to accept the fact. And of often you sometimes have to do a sort of, Hey, we are a category, but just start here and then we’ll show you the whole category, right?

So there’s the, uh, uh, product led growth approach to that. Um, look, it’s amazing when you create a category. [00:44:00] Um, you have a moment in time where you have a tremendous lead. I mean, demand base created essentially the a BM category. Uh, and you know, along came a, a number of competitors who, who sort of changed how it’s even talked about now and is it, is it intent?

Right? You know, six sense with, with that. So. There was a competitive advantage, and there still is because Demandbase was the university. And by the way, that’s another reason to think about it. When you create a category, you can create the, the, the educational program like Demandbase really led on that.

Uh, it’s, it’s a, a lot of energy to get there, to do it well, and a lot of folks die trying.

James: Yeah, I think that it, I think the product has a huge, of course, part of it too, right? Like, again, I not sure Drift did the greatest thing, [00:45:00] inventing conversational marketing, glorifying a chatbot, but like HubSpot created a category.

Clay right now is creating a category, like those are all products that I think are driving that more so than marketing.

Drew: Yeah. I, I mean, I, I, I, that’s, I don’t, I wouldn’t agree with you completely like HubSpot. Created inbound as a category and delivered on it through marketing. They spent a tremendous amount on content in the early days.

Yeah. Market, right? They built all these tools. They educated the market. Their conference became the place that you went. It’s called Inbound. I mean, I think they did a fantastic job and I think it’s really paid off for them now. The irony is they’ve expanded and grown beyond inbound. Yeah. And, and so they’re, they’ve sort of had to evolve, but I think that their, you know, their marketing was better in, in their, uh, when, when they were, you know, they were [00:46:00] working on that category.

Andy: Yeah, for sure. All right. Before we come to a close, I wanna give you a lightning round. Okay. All right. I like how we got this one set up too, James. So one book, every CMO should read go.

Drew: Oh God, of course. Renegade Marketing by Drew Nier.

Andy: There we go.

Drew: All right, we’re cutting it off. Forget it. Uh, a corollary, I just, uh, I just read, uh, UDI led door’s, uh, book, uh, courageous Marketing.

Uh, that’s, uh, it’s, it’s a, it’s a great read.

Andy: One marketing trend you’re tired of hearing about.

Drew: Um, uh.

Andy: So many to choose from.

Drew: So many persona

Andy: personas. Yeah. Okay, good. Okay. Uh, one, I kind of know the answer to this one Skill CMOs will absolutely need in the next two years. I, same skill they need today. Leadership. [00:47:00] One mistake CMO should stop making immediately.

Drew: Just giving the tools, uh, the AI tools to their team without training them and benchmarking.

Andy: All right. Last one. What has been your favorite CMO huddle moment so far?

Drew: So about three weeks ago, A CMO in our community sent, uh, supported CMO huddles.com. They said Help, um, our CRO. Just, uh, said, I want marketing to contribute 60% of pipe instead of 30% of pipe, and I’m meeting with him tomorrow morning.

So, uh, we did help. Um, we reached out to six folks that we knew would have some kind of an answer. They all provided benchmark data that they had to this, um, CMO, that CMO was then able to. Sort of bring that information on a very rational level. Say, well, you know, there’s a lot to talk about here and settle on a [00:48:00] number that actually made sense and sort of averted a crisis.

And you know, that’s what a beautiful thing when a community is working and everybody knows they’re gonna have one of those help moments. I love it when our community comes to rescue. Awesome. That’s awesome.

Andy: Well, drew, before we let you go, how can people learn more about CMO huddles and reach out to you?

Drew: Uh, drew Nier at, uh, on LinkedIn and CMO huddles.com and hopefully, uh, they’re watching this in two or three days. They’ll see our new bot on our website and, uh, but, uh, which we’ll be able to answer their, uh, all their questions. But yeah, cmmo huddles.com. Lots of good information. We do have a free starter program for all.

Uh, B2B heads of marketing.

Andy: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, drew. We really appreciate it. Great conversation. So until next time guys, we’ll catch you later. Thanks [00:49:00] guys.