GTM Live

We've been seeing a lot of buzz about the TOPO "Double Funnel" lately. But what exactly is it? And is it worth implementing or is it just another shiny object that sounds good in theory, but breaks down in practice? In this episode, Chris breaks down what the double funnel is, how it works, and the reasons you should think twice about implementing it into your go-to-market strategy.

Creating a culture where people are not only allowed to test and fail but encouraged to, is a necessity for innovation. But how do you create a culture that breeds innovation? The short answer is—it starts at the top. The CEO sets the stage for what will (and won't) be tolerated and leads by doing to set the example for the rest of the org. In this episode, Chris talks about how Refine Labs ha...

What do B2B brands have to do stand out as more and more companies adopt demand generation strategies? First, most companies are still running the old playbook, and even though they’re calling what they do demand gen, it’s still lead gen. Companies who truly want to stand out running a demand gen playbook should focus on three things: Having a deep understanding of your customers Having subject ma...

Most B2B marketing strategies are reactive. They spend a lot of money to show up once the customer is in a buying motion. But the problem with that strategy is that it becomes way more difficult to stand out in the crowd. Buyer's don't know who you are until they're ready to pull the trigger and they have no idea what sets you apart. In this episode, Chris talks about how companies can...

Employees have more power than ever in the employer/employee relationship and it's because most companies are still playing from a legacy playbook. The best companies are attracting top-tier talent because they are becoming destination organizations. "Price's Law" is the mentality that 50% of the work at a normal organization is done by the square root of the total employees. For...

We started doing Demand Gen Live back in March of 2020 with an audience of 15 people. Two years later, we're still doing Demand Gen Live weekly to an audience of 100+ and many of the original 15 are still showing up weekly. We brought back the OG co-host, Gaetano DiNardi, for episode 100 to talk about SEO vs. Brand. With top Google content becoming more and more about optimization and less abo...

Community is a powerful tool in scaling a company. Marketo demonstrated just how powerful community was in B2B when they built Marketing Nation. It was one of the first communities of its kind in B2B and is one of the major factors that led to their domination in the CRM market. Today we're talking with Sarah Kennedy Ellis, former CMO at Marketo, and current VP of Global Growth & Demand at...

We talk a lot about tactical execution on State of Demand Gen. But there’s another side of your marketing strategy that is just as important—your brand story. Your brand’s story is the backbone of your marketing strategy. It’s what creates deep loyalty to your brand over competitors. In this episode, we welcome back Dave Gerhardt to talk about the importance of building a story around your brand.

There has never been a better time to be a top-tier marketer. Demand is high and supply is low. But how do you become one of the top 1%? In this episode, Chris goes through his top 6 pieces of advice for marketers that are trying to become the best. These are all tips that he implemented himself and attributes to his own success and the success of Refine Labs.

Creating content in-house gives you a massive advantage in the market. Yet, content creation is still one of the most outsourced items for in-house marketing teams. When you outsource your content creation (and organic distribution) you lose key advantages. The first is that you don't give your in-house subject matter experts the ability to speak your company's unique value prop or opinion...

Modern demand gen practices have not yet been adopted by many companies in the EMEA region. In this episode of State of Demand Gen, Chris talks with Adam Holmgren on what companies across the pond need to do to get started using modern demand gen and how it can positively impact their business.

Pipeline velocity isn't just about pipeline creation. Pipeline velocity uses 3 historical metrics (win rate, ACV, and sales cycle length) to forecast forward. Most companies only look at pipeline creation. They don't look at sales cycle length. They don't look at win rates or conversation rates. And they don't look at ACVs. The beauty of pipeline velocity is that in order to drive...

B2B SaaS companies have been running the same lead generation marketing strategy for over a decade now—create a gated piece of content, collect low intent leads, and have your sales team follow up. This practice may have been necessary 10 years ago, but with the advancement in how buyers consume content and increasingly tight privacy laws, smart marketing teams are challenging the status quo and t...

The goal of B2B paid social ads should be to communicate a single idea to your audience, not to move them from "who is this company" to demo.  Companies waste millions of dollars every year by spending their budget on ads that fail to produce meaningful results because they don't tell the right story. In this episode, Chris gets super tactical on how to run effective campaigns that p...

Capturing demand works hand in hand with generating demand, but it’s something that companies often overlook. When you’ve created enough demand that a customer is ready to buy, that buying process needs the best experience possible if you want them to move to closed-won. In this episode, Chris goes back to basics and talks about what to do after you've generated enough demand to move a prospec...

In this episode, we pulled together some of the greatest hits of our talks on The Attribution Mirage. We start with an early episode of Demand Gen Live where we began experimenting with required open text fields comparing where customers said they found us and what software was telling us. After the explanation of the initial experiment and results, we skip forward several months where we share 20...

Most B2B companies know how to do sales. Most of them do not, however, know how to run a modern marketing strategy designed for creating demand, capturing demand, and funnel optimization. Companies are still running the same go-to-market strategy they were running in 2011 by pumping up MQLs and other vanity metrics that require more sales headcount with less results. In this episode, Chris talks t...

Winning in dark social requires a well-executed content strategy. Part of executing a content strategy successfully means that it's scalable. But scaling content efficiently is something that most companies fail to do. That's where stacking growth comes into play. It's at the foundation of dark social because it's what allows you to distribute your content across multiple platforms...

Events in 2022 play a totally different role than they did even a few years ago. Gone are the days of having to spend huge chunks of your marketing budget to build trade show booths that generate little return and sponsoring overpriced industry events. Your audience is digital and your event strategy needs to be aligned closely with your digital goals. In this episode, Chris talks about how you ca...

The term demand gen gets thrown around a lot. A lot of companies claim to be running demand gen programs, but when you take a deeper look it’s still a traditional lead gen program. In this episode, Chris does a deep dive on what is demand gen, what is lead gen, how do they differ, and how the strategy has to change to run a true demand gen model. 

Should SDRs report to marketing or sales? This is an age-old debate. But it's asking the wrong question. It doesn't matter which team the SDR reports to if they're doing the same, low-efficiency role. The real question is what is the future job function of the SDR and does that new functionality align with marketing or sales? In this episode, Chris talks about how he believes the role...

How do you attract top talent to work for you? Is organic social a waste of time in B2B? What's the best way to leverage a company LinkedIn account? Chris is answering all these questions (and more) in this grab bag of marketing and business questions we sourced from Quora and Reddit. 

Everybody loves metrics. They let us know when we're doing good and when we need to do better. The problem is, marketing teams have adopted certain metrics as their KPIs that don't do either one of those things. In fact, more often than not, when we drive those metrics we generally make our entire revenue team less efficient. In this episode, Chris talks about the 5 metrics that you should...

It's that time of year for a lot of companies, annual planning. The time when everyone is excited about the possibilities that the new year brings. But along with that excitement, comes high expectations—many times unrealistic. Those expectations often drive decisions that end up falling short of where you want to be at quarter-end. In this episode, Chris talks about the 5 biggest mistakes tha...

It’s not uncommon for marketers and business leaders to hear the methodologies we talk about at Refine Labs and immediately dismiss them as “ineffective”, “clickbait”, or a number of other things. But the reality is, companies only fail to succeed with our methodologies when they continue to measure marketing with the same vanity metrics that have been pushed by MarTech vendors since 2010. When yo...