7 Marketing Tips From a 3x B2B CMO

Interview with Dawn Crew, CMO of Trulioo, on her view of creating successful B2B marketing.

In this interview, Dawn Crew, a three-time B2B CMO, emphasizes the significance of content to marketing and sales success. The conversation delves into a range of six additional must-have tips on.

How to use content to spark new conversations?
How important is content to the role of marketing?
How to qualify lead conversations in preparation for sales?
How do you address the buyers that aren’t in the market today?
How to create highly valuable, non-superficial content?
Final words of wisdom from Dawn

Dawn’s Marketing Perspective: “Content is the conversation that we have with our prospects and customers in the market. Content is the conversation vehicle, and it is so important that we have a point of view or something to say about the things that are on the minds of our customers.”

Continue reading to access Dawn’s invaluable marketing insights accumulated from numerous experiences throughout the years, conveniently compiled in a single interview.

Dawn Crew, 3x B2B CMO

How important is content to the role of marketing?

Steve MacDonald: From A CMO of a B2B company a number of times, what is your take on the importance of content to marketing?

Dawn Crew: It’s the lifeblood of effective marketing. Honestly, I look at our team in a number of different ways in terms of our resource allocation, and one of the ways I like to look at it is not by job title but by:

How many of our resources, people, and programs are focused on awareness?
How many of them are focused on demand generation?
How many of them are focused on sales enablement?

Those are the biggest buckets, right? Product marketing is essential for all three of those.

One of the core roles of a product marketer is to take all of the product management product information and create what I call a set of core content.

And that set of core content is not always for market consumption, it’s maybe more for internal enablement purposes, but then it’s what my content teams and demand generation teams use to create their promotional material. And so that synergy is really, really important because it’s essential to be consistent in the market, to be understood, for your position to be clear, and for your brand to be built.

So content is really the foundation for everything marketing related, whether it’s web copy, a white paper, a product sheet, or a research report. It’s all content. And none of the other functions within marketing operate effectively without great content.

Steve MacDonald: On a scale of 1 to 10 on the importance of content for marketing the company, with 1 being not important at all and 10 meaning that content is vital—how would you rate the importance of content?

Dawn Crew: You’ll be happy to hear this in your line of work, that I would say it’s a 10.

Content is the conversation that we have with our prospects and customers in the market.

Content is the conversation vehicle, and it is so important that we have a point of view or something to say about the things that are on the minds of our customers.

We work with upper mid-market and large enterprise customers throughout the world. We have between five to seven core buyer personas within a large enterprise account. For example, each of those personas is thinking a number of different things around identity verification, and we need to be able to engage in conversation with them on any one of those things. And so, when you think about it from that perspective, the requirement for good content becomes exponential.

If you can’t start a conversation on a topic that’s important to your prospect or customer, you’re probably not going to be able to continue the conversation.

How to use content to spark new conversations?

Steve MacDonald: The conversation is really important, and getting into a conversation is the hard part. We must convince buyers that it’s important enough for them to talk to us. Tell us a little bit about the role of content in sparking that initial conversation to get the ball rolling.

Dawn Crew: I think about it along the lines of how I do my job.

I’m a CMO of a global company. I have challenges, right? I have problems that need to be solved, and as experienced as I am and as experienced as my leadership team is, we don’t always have every single answer. And when we don’t have answers, where do we go? We go to Google, we search on the internet, and what comes up is a plethora of content.

So it’s really important to think about the challenges and the problems that our customers are having in the market and where they’re going to search for answers. And yes, it might be a Google search to start with, but it could be a networking event, it could be a physical event, it could be the social feed that they’re checking out. We need to have content that talks about the challenges that they’re having and offers solutions. So we think about that a lot.

As an example, for our customers a year ago even, or two years ago, for sure, it was about acquiring customers at all costs. And as we all know, things have turned upside down. So our customers are now needing to bring on the right customers.

They are asking questions like, “How do I do that in a really cost-effective way?” Because it’s taking a longer time to acquire customers, it’s more expensive. So the customers that they bring on board, they have to know, are going to be profitable. Like that’s one of the biggest challenges that our customers are facing in the market.

And so we talk about that, and we think about how we look to our own experts, our customer success team, the people who are on the front lines every day. How do we harvest some of these solutions and put that forth on our website in terms of decision guides and videos, all sorts of webinars, all sorts of different formats for our customers to consume and hopefully learn something and go back to the office a little bit smarter because of our content?

How to qualify lead conversations in preparation for sales?

Steve MacDonald: How do you think about a qualified lead coming from these conversations and turning it over to the sales process?

Dawn Crew: So, a couple of things.

First and foremost, it’s not a linear situation, right? I mean, B2B is not B2C. B2C is a lot easier in a lot of ways in that it’s a very straight line. B2B is very circular. So I’ll answer your question in a couple of ways.

The first way is like to the core, we’ve gotta have our numbers. We have lead goals every month.

So what’s a lead for us means:

Somebody has knocked on our door and expressed interest
Exchanged their information
Asked for us to reply

So that’s a lead. A marketing-qualified lead (MQL) is someone who’s knocked on the door and wants to learn more.

In a number of our journeys, you can request a demo or talk to an expert. Our customers, in some recent research we did, think of Trulioo you as a trusted expert for identity verification. And so what I mean by they want to reply is they’ve not only downloaded a piece of content or consumed something that was ungated, but they’ve said, “Hey, I want to see more, so I want to book a demo, or I want to talk to a trusted expert.”

Secondly is within the core industries that we focus on and passes the firmographic sort of criteria that we know leads to a successful ongoing customer at Trulioo. At that point, an SDR will reach out and reply and see if the person who is now an MQL needs additional information from what they might have downloaded or requested.

A lot of times, people want demos. They’ll understand a little bit more about the problems that are trying to be solved. And then we have a process for doing more discovery and assessment to see if there really is a good fit. From that point, then, the whole team, the solutions consulting team, the sales team, and even sometimes our customer success team gets involved in the resulting conversations.

So I think about things from a very linear perspective, conversion rates, metrics, and both quantitative and qualitative assessments. We also look at intent. And that intent is through some of the tools that we use. We are a 6sense user. Mm-hmm. We have other tools that will show what keywords people are researching when they come to our website.

Our web analytics will show what pages they come to and how long they stay on pages. We look at behaviors on our website where we’ll see someone come in from a certain domain, so we’ll know that it’s a target account. And then, the next day, two other people will come, and the next day, 10 others will come.

And so, we’ll assume that someone copied and shared a link, right? We don’t know who that is. We look for those leading indicators that also tell us which content makes sense to continue to build on because people are really coming back to this. This is important.

Steve MacDonald: We don’t always know when we’re creating content, which content is really gonna hit the mark.

What you’re talking about is all of that intent data that tells us, here’s an area to dive deeper. We might want to do a webinar on this. We might want to do a series on this or blog posts or an ebook or something like that. Let’s do some interviews with industry experts on this. Let’s dive deep. This is of interest. I think that’s really important because we can get so focused on just knowing that we need to keep cranking content. The quality of the content, who’s consuming it, and how important it is to them.

How do you address the buyers that aren’t in the market today?

Dawn Crew: If we think about our total addressable market, only about 5-10%, depending on who you talk to, are going to be in the market at any given point in time. So that doesn’t mean that you only want to deliver value or build a connection with those people who are in the market.

You want to build value with everybody, not just with those who actually have a problem that they’re trying to solve now. If not done right, you’re just kind of an interruption. Right?

Steve MacDonald: How do you market to that other 95%? What’s your strategy to groom and nurture them so that when the time is right, they know who Trulioo is?

Dawn Crew: There’s a number of ways, but I think the most important thing is that it does come back to content. It comes back to having valuable content, not superficial marketing content, right? It comes to having content on your website, whether it’s gated, ungated, or a webinar or videos, or something that will help them do their job, whether they’re in the market for a new solution or not.

For sure, when they are in the market, they are going to remember the person or the company as the trusted expert. They’re gonna remember Trulioo. They’re gonna remember that we were a source of expertise, and so they’re gonna come to us. That’s what we’re looking to build with the entire addressable market.

How to create highly valuable, non-superficial content?

Steve MacDonald: Now, what you just identified is one of the biggest challenges in the whole B2B industry, creating truly valuable content. There are all kinds of stats out there that the majority of B2B buyers think somewhere around 70% of the thought leadership, more valuable content they read wasn’t worth their time.

And then about 60% of sellers inside of a B2B company don’t think that the content that marketing is creating has any value. So when you talk about the key to that other 95%, getting in front of them with really valuable content, that is a major challenge. How do you address that challenge?

Dawn Crew: Yeah, it is a major challenge, right? Because when you’re helping people solve complex problems, you need to be offering up sophisticated solutions. I think about it like when I was growing up, my grandma made these chocolate donuts, which were really well known in the town in Wisconsin that she was from..

All of the women in her network told her she shouldn’t share the recipe because it was a secret. It was her secret recipe. They were worried that if you gave it away, everybody could make the donuts. My grandma’s position was to give away the recipe and that my chocolate donuts will still be the best around.

That perspective of being open and sharing what we know means that we know that nobody will do it as well as we do. No one is gonna help customers bring down their cost of good verified users in the way that we do because we have a unique platform plus capabilities plus data, right?

So if we can help customers by sharing details that are meaningful, that’s going to bring real value.

Steve MacDonald: That’s really important because we tend to kind of feel like our uniqueness, our capabilities are our own. But the more that we share, the more transparency there is the more trust that is built.

And in the B2B buying process, more than half of the sales process is based on emotionally-based decisions. And that’s emotional trust and confidence and being trusted as an advisor in the industry.

Final words of wisdom from Dawn

Steve MacDonald: Is there any other advice that you’d want to share with other CMOs, other SVPs and VPs of marketing as they’re looking to make the same kind of accomplishments that you have?

Dawn Crew: Maybe it’s my roots in product marketing and then into demand gen, but I think content is the core to successful marketing. And the more we can communicate with sales and talk to them about the content that we have produced and help them understand it and use it as conversation pieces with their customers, the better.

That is also going to create a feedback loop and system of what’s working, what’s not, what’s resonating, what’s not, and the better our content will be. I think sometimes marketers are simply counting the number of white papers they did, or blogs they wrote, or web pages they updated. Nobody really cares about that.

How many customers were engaged? How long are they reading our blogs? How many people keep coming back from the same company? These are things that are really interesting to sales. So not only should they know that, but they should be able to cite some of the content that we’re producing as well.

And I know our sales team loves the content and uses it in and throughout their conversations with customers. So I would say lead a little bit more with content.

Steve MacDonald: That makes perfect sense. It’s unbelievable, but 30% of salespeople’s time is spent on content development. And that’s kind of crazy because no salesperson was ever hired because of their content creation.

Dawn Crew: Yes. And you know what else is really important is consistency. It’s important that we’re producing content that’s consistent with the conversation sales are having and customer success are having with customers, right? And, so that loop is, is really, really important. So we don’t want to be, as marketers, producing content that sales are like, well, that doesn’t help me.

We, we want them to be like, ha, I want more of that so that it can help me. You know, about 22 touches are how often a company is going to read something, a snippet, a page, a paper about your solution before they actually engage in a live conversation.

And, you know, we’ve seen 57 touches, a hundred touches throughout a sales cycle. That’s why the content’s so important, and it’s so important that it’s consistent throughout marketing to sales and back to marketing again.

Steve MacDonald: This means there have to be constant conversations between marketing and sales and customer success on what their conversations are, the pain points, the problems that they’re constantly addressing.

Dawn, thank you so much. It’s so valuable to have the perspectives that you’re bringing out here, and I just really appreciate the time that you spent with us today. Yeah,

Dawn Crew: Thank you. It’s been super fun. I really appreciate the time as well.

Next Steps

One of the things Dawn stressed the most is the ongoing need for highly valuable content. The kind that is harder to create—the “non-superficial” content. To learn more about how to efficiently create highly successful, revenue-producing thought leadership content and sales enablement strategies on an ongoing basis, CLICK HERE to schedule a 20-minute strategy session.

ELEVATING CONTENT MARKETING STANDARDS RAISES A CRUCIAL QUESTION:
Why shouldn’t the very act of creating thought leadership content also spark new conversations with in-pipeline deals, top prospects, and high-priority customers for revenue expansion? Or serve as the cornerstone for learning and applying voice-of-customer strategies? That’s the power of ABM Podcasting—engaging B2B buyers and customers in meaningful conversations that uncover essential go-to-market insights, support long sales cycles, reinforce your market perspective, build peer-level trust, and dismantle objections that kill deals.

Steven MacDonald

Steven MacDonald is the founder of Content Strategies, CEO of a MarTech SaaS Company, fractional CMO consulting with leading B2B companies and former Director of Strategy and Client Service at top ten digital marketing agencies.

Follow Steve on LinkedIn.

Steven MacDonald

Follow Steve on LinkedIn.