GTM Live

Chris Walker and Megan Bowen brought the Demand Gen Live community together again last night for an hour-long episode. They covered the history of lead gen & ABM and the leading metric every marketing team should be measuring. They also hosted a live Q&A and answered questions about event strategy, direct mail, marketing without technology, and marketing career paths. Register here for nex...

Chris joined The Marketing Starter podcast as a guest to talk about the dynamic between marketing sales, the making of a B2B brand, paid social and ABM. He got into a ton of marketing fundamentals and broke down what "just checking the box" looks like. Chris shared what happens when marketing takes on sales behaviors and calls them marketing.

This episode consists of a recording from Chris Walker's speaking engagement at the Full-Funnel Summit 2021. The theme for his talk was Measurement & Reporting.

Chris Walker and Megan Bowen hosted last night's Demand Gen Live from Austin, TX where they're gearing up for the Refine Labs offsite. They prepped a couple topics for the episode...The first, backed by actual data, being "The Attribution Mirage - Marketing teams are being led astray and think they’re being 'data-driven'" and the second "How to prepare your executive...

Chris Walker presented a keynote on Dark Social at this year's Traffic & Conversion Summit in San Diego, CA. We've discussed dark social on the podcast before, but as a reminder - dark social consists of the places where B2B buyers are discovering new products. Places where attribution is not available, like communities, organic social, groups, content platforms, meetups and internal comms. Chris...

On last night's Demand Gen Live, Chris Walker signed on from San Diego, CA and covered the following agenda: Why the B2B agency model needs a complete overhaul, The truth about Marketing to the enterprise, and How “data-driven” companies lie to themselves about being data-driven. He also opened the stage to a live Q&A where he answered questions about the things companies decide to continu...

Chris Walker joined the Alphov & Lopez Podcast for a full 90 minutes to chat through attribution, high intent vs. low intent, and overall marketing strategy. Chris was asked what would happen if marketers forgot about leads and demo requests and instead focused solely on qualified pipeline and revenue. He also shared his thoughts on how ABM is nothing new, and how he'd recommend it be implemen...

Chris presented a keynote on the topic of ABM. He was able to clarify his thoughts through sharing his experience with ABM at previous businesses, for current clients, and internally at Refine Labs. “ABM is marketing fundamentals which were around way before the technology existed.”

Chris Walker and Megan Bowen brought the Demand Gen Live community back last night to discuss where marketers get their information and the harm of over-relying on technology and ditching the fundamentals. The community members came on the show live to share where they get their information about marketing strategy and tactics, as well as reputable vendors. Chris dove into why marketers don't...

Dark Social consists of the places where B2B buyers are discovering new products where attribution is not available. Places like communities, organic social, groups, content platforms, meetups and internal comms. Why's dark social important to marketers? Because as Chris Walker says, "if you’re waiting on intent signals, you’re way too late." Dave Gerhardt, now Chief Brand Officer at...

Chris Walker and Megan Bowen hosted another Demand Gen Live installment last night with a heavy focus on marketing in organic channels that can't be tracked easily, if at all. Chris built off of the Dark Funnel topic and introduced Dark Social, where most of B2B buying decisions are made. He commented that "if you're waiting on intent data, you're way too late." They also ans...

Allison Munro, CMO at Vena Solutions, joined Chris to talk about a topic we’ve never covered on the State of Demand Gen: how to present to the board to build credibility and trust, and what level of information you should provide. Allison shares what the recipe is for a successful board deck, as well as how to outline the work and results marketing is driving for the business as a whole, instead o...

Chris Walker presented a MUST listen keynote on marketing strategy & innovation yesterday. He talked about how marketers often are fed the wrong information which leads to poor strategy decisions, and how they can change that and position themselves to be ready for opportunities they can capitalize on. He stated that "marketing is pure offense when done correctly" and proceeded to share that m...

After a week off of Demand Gen Live, Chris and Megan were back last night for the Tuesday evening installment where they covered the following topics:  A big shift in B2B Search (SEO/SEM) dynamics,  Is the MQA the new MQL?,  Breaking down what happens when Marketing crushes their pipeline goals & sales misses quota by 50%,  Word of Mouth is driving a lot of business for you that you don't...

This conversation was repurposed from Chris Walker's appearance as a guest on the B2B Made Simple Podcast. They got into the weeds in regards to organic social content strategy. Sam asked Chris questions about channels for new user acquisition, experimenting, metrics and the nitty gritty behind podcasting and creating content. Chris shared that the opportunity on LinkedIn organic isn't ove...

Dustin Deno, SVP of Global Sales at Showpad, joined Chris on the podcast to address the following question: "when we stop generating leads that don't close, how are we going to keep our SDR team busy? They discussed an alternative for going outbound - intent, as well as how sales teams respond to this type of change. They also covered both the benefits and the challenges of this type of g...

Triana Mills, Creative Director at Refine Labs, joined us for another Back to Basics episode, this time on the topic of The Power of Creative in B2B Marketing. Triana and Chris answered questions about the advantages of using good creative in B2B and how marketers can better work with their creative team to drive more expansive tests and engaging creative. 

We recorded Chris’s LIVE session from the B2B Sales & Marketing Exchange 2021 in Boston, MA where he talks about how the marketers that are focusing on the dark funnel are the ones who are winning. This involves giving people information they want in the places they want to consume it, on their own time, as well as a fundamentally different mindset and measurement criteria. Instead of using the da...

Chris Walker and Megan Bowen hosted another Demand Gen Live last night, breaking down the Refine Labs strategy for the community and talking about the more effective alternatives to buyer personas. Chris expanded on the dark funnel and connected that concept to splitting the funnel. He also answered questions about opportunities outside of your 9-5 in marketing, the most important questions market...

Chris Walker hosted another live consulting session, this time with a post-seed stage start-up that is currently following the organic playbook we have shared on the podcast. You'll get to hear about things that the founders and practitioners noticed in their own business after implementing the strategy, and how you can implement an organic content strategy yourself with little to no resources...

We hosted a Demand Gen Expert Session with Tom Wentworth, CMO at Recorded Future, to talk about the catch-22 of attribution and what marketers can and should do about it. We've all been in a place where the challenges of attribution are apparent. When you're hitting your numbers, no one cares about attribution. But when you're not, that's when others become critical of it.

Chris Walker and Megan Bowen hosted Demand Gen Live again last night and covered the following agenda: -What happens when Marketing aligns to REVENUE instead of "leads" or SQLs,  -How "ABM" breaks down at execution, and   -The blurring line between marketing & sales as well as how Chris distinguishes the two.   They also answered questions about where SDRs should sit in an...

Joe Mullings, Chairman & CEO of The Mullings Group Companies, joined Chris in the Refine Labs podcast studio for a discussion about what's changing in the hiring landscape and how companies should respond. Joe shared that "the market has changed more in the past 12 months than my previous 30 years in the business.” They talked about work from anywhere vs. working in the office, as an...

Chris Walker and Megan Bowen hosted Demand Gen Live last night and covered the following agenda: 1 - The 5 Reasons Why B2B Advertising Fails, 2 - Building Your Paid Social Content Mix, and 3 - Why B2B Companies Need to Create Content In-House. They also answered questions live in regards to testing creative, how to decide if you have product market fit, growth marketers vs. product marketers, and...

Chris hosted another live consulting session last week with an early-stage SaaS company. He walked through their overall strategy and made recommendations throughout, touching on customer research, their media plan across various channels, organic content strategy, and why optimizing for leads drives the wrong behaviors. He broke down their current strategy and provided deep and tactical recommend...