Joanna Nguyen, CMO at Willow, shares her approach to building and scaling marketing teams from the ground up. She emphasizes the value of testing, learning, and adapting strategies like high-velocity sales, product-led growth, and customer engagement. Joanna also explores breaking away from traditional models by incorporating B2C and SMB practices to drive success in new markets.
“As a CMO, you have an opportunity to truly break from the mold. You have to continually test and challenge your beliefs, often unlearning things you’ve learned over time.” – Joanna Nguyen
Joanna Nguyen’s insights focus on overcoming both functional and organizational hurdles when building marketing teams from the ground up. She explains how targeted customer marketing can significantly boost revenue and encourages using high-velocity sales and product-led growth (PLG) strategies, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. Joanna also stresses the importance of constant experimentation, data-driven choices, and organizing teams around specific goals to encourage innovation and adaptability.
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[Transcript]
[00:00:05] Steve MacDonald: Welcome, everyone, to the C-Suite Sales and Marketing Perspectives Podcast. I’m Steve MacDonald, your host. We’ve got a really interesting conversation today with Joanna Nguyen. Joanna, you’re currently the CMO at Willow. I’ll have you explain more about that, but your background is perfect for today’s topic: a CMO’s guide to starting from scratch and learning as you go in marketing.
[00:00:35] Steve MacDonald: Now, in that “learn as you go” motion, you helped take a company from zero to $25 billion and an IPO. We’re talking about major experiences here.
[00:00:48] Steve MacDonald: You worked at Amazon, and I’d love to hear more about what you did there. I’m going to stop teasing your expertise and turn it over to you. Maybe expand on that, and then we’ll dive right into the concept of “learn as you go” and starting from scratch in marketing.
[00:01:03] Joanna Nguyen: Awesome. Thanks so much for having me, Steve. It’s great to be here. Yes, I just started at Willow, which focuses on digital twin technology for the built world. It’s really exciting stuff around sustainability, energy cost savings, and what you can do with that. Before that, I was leading B2B marketing at a company called ChowNow, an online SaaS ordering company. I also spent five years at Amazon, particularly with a startup within Amazon..
[00:01:30] Joanna Nguyen: We took Amazon Business, which is Amazon’s venture into B2B retail, from zero to $25 billion and expanded into 10 countries. I believe they now have over 5 million customers worldwide. It was phenomenal growth and a very exciting ride to be a part of from the beginning.
[00:01:49] Joanna Nguyen: I also spent time at FireEye, a cybersecurity company that went through an IPO. We made several acquisitions while I was there, and I helped build the marketing technology team from the ground up.
[00:02:02] Steve MacDonald: The reason I love your experience, and thank you for explaining it, is because this “start from scratch, learn as you go” approach can feel scrappy and small. But you’re talking about strategies used at one of the biggest companies in the world—Amazon—and the IPO experience with several rounds of exits. So, let’s dive into it. You have a certain philosophy around building and scaling marketing teams, and I think that’s a great place to start.
[00:02:30] Joanna Nguyen: Yes, absolutely. One thing we can talk about is the challenges when you’re scaling and building marketing teams from the ground up. I think about these challenges in two categories.
[00:02:36] Joanna Nguyen: First, there are functional challenges. These are things like building a marketing strategy from scratch, choosing the right channels, defining your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile), and figuring out messaging. How do you communicate your company’s value? Some of this is straightforward, but you don’t always have historical data to rely on.
[00:02:57] Joanna Nguyen: For example, when I was at Amazon, entering the B2B retail space, Amazon was world-class at consumer retail, but they didn’t understand the B2B buyer. B2B buyers don’t shop for their office break rooms in the same way consumers shop for kitchen or home goods. That’s a completely different mindset.
[00:03:19] Joanna Nguyen: So, we had to really dig in and understand this difference without much historical data. Even at a company like Amazon, the question was: How do you get creative? What do you know, and how do you go about finding the data you need?
[00:03:32] Joanna Nguyen: The other set of challenges is organizational. Even if you’re one of the first marketing hires, or you’re rebuilding a marketing team from the ground up, make no mistake—someone in the organization has probably been doing something related to marketing. You have to figure out what misconceptions or preconceptions exist about what marketing is expected to do. You may also have to challenge the status quo when things fall outside the realm of marketing.
[00:04:02] Joanna Nguyen: I’ve got some experience I can share. For instance, at Chow Now, they weren’t doing any customer marketing. They had a huge customer success team, but marketing was very reactive. It was like, “Hey, we need to send out an email.” But how do you start the conversation and say, “Marketing can actually influence onboarding and customer marketing”?
[00:04:21] Joanna Nguyen: I always see it as a 360-view. We see things happening on Google and Facebook before customers even start buying. But what’s happening in the product? What’s coming from the company? How do you bring all of that together and get all those parties in the room?
[00:04:36] Joanna Nguyen: Another organizational challenge is cross-functional relationships that are non-existent. There’s baggage that you have to unpack.
[00:04:43] Joanna Nguyen: As you get into a role, how do you build from the ground up? These are the things you’ll need to learn to navigate.
[00:04:50] Steve MacDonald: A lot of important points there. One of the biggest is how marketing can help customer success not be reactive. Typically, in many customer success organizations, we answer client questions and try to cross-sell and upsell. That’s good customer success support, but 30 to 40 percent of a company’s new revenue each year should come from existing customers. Yet, we often focus on new logo development, which gets most of our attention and resources. If 30 to 40 percent of new revenue comes from existing customers, we should be understanding them at a much deeper level, running campaigns around them, and supporting them.
[00:05:34] Steve MacDonald: Tell us more about your thoughts on that. Because 30 to 40 percent revenue growth is huge. When you talk about campaigns and marketing getting more involved in customer success, what do you think about that?
[00:05:51] Joanna Nguyen: One of the things I looked at when I was at Chow Now was how to segment customers from casual to top-tier. I also did this at Amazon Business, where I ran customer growth. It was about once you have an Amazon Business account, how do we keep you buying? We built frameworks like a high-value action framework.
[00:06:11] Joanna Nguyen: What activities define a top-tier customer? What commonalities are there? How do I analyze the data, identify patterns, and create an actionable marketing framework from that? This spans marketing, product, customer success, and sales.
[00:06:28] Joanna Nguyen: It even starts with presales, changing the approach there. We try to identify important customer actions. For example, with Chow Now’s online ordering, most of our customers didn’t have photos. So, we made adding photos a high-value action. Marketing created campaigns around it. Sales talked about it when selling the product. Product made it easier to adopt, and customer success used it as an upsell. These steps help move customers from one segment to another, building momentum. Marketing, I believe, is key to centralizing and driving this kind of operation. I did this at both Amazon and Chow Now, and I’m passionate about it.
[00:07:29] Steve MacDonald: Many companies have a broad definition of their ideal customer profile (ICP). The ICP should be the customer that keeps repurchasing. That’s what you’re trying to replicate, right?
[00:07:42] Steve MacDonald: Understanding that helps create frameworks and campaigns to support it. The definition should drive decisions so you’re not bringing in customers who don’t fit, which wastes resources and affects NRR. The wrong fit can lead to churn. Understanding the ICP not only drives revenue but also the entire pipeline process.
[00:08:13] Joanna Nguyen: What’s interesting is that the actions that drive customers to the next level can change based on the segment within your ICP. For a company like Amazon, where you’re targeting everyone, there’s no reason why you couldn’t buy from Amazon, whether you’re an educator or an office manager in a tech company. But the actions that move someone to the next level may look different.
[00:08:39] Joanna Nguyen: An educator may start with books, for example, while an office manager may start with office supplies. The key is understanding what defines a top-tier customer and helping them unlock that potential.
[00:08:51] Joanna Nguyen: I think of it from a customer-centric perspective: how is the customer going to get the most out of the product? What’s going to make them stick around? That’s the key thing you want to focus on.
[00:09:00] Steve MacDonald: So, tell me more about this idea of high-velocity sales and PLG strategies. Let’s unwrap that.
[00:09:12] Joanna Nguyen: Yeah, it’s a very interesting space. When it comes to high-velocity SMB, and with Amazon, it was more of a PLG motion. It’s about signing up, offering it for free, and then figuring out how to keep them spending.
[00:09:26] Joanna Nguyen: What’s unique is that I had to throw out the B2B playbook. I came from an enterprise cybersecurity background, where deals are multimillion-dollar and multiyear. You focus on thought leadership and buying groups. But with high-velocity SMB, the deals are much smaller, and they behave more like consumers.
[00:09:47] Joanna Nguyen: This opens up new channels, like more social and video. Referrals became a big part of it. Of course, referrals work in B2B too, but with SMB, it can be a real consumer channel. And it works well. as a consumer channel. And that works really well for S and B.
[00:10:04] Joanna Nguyen: Also, there’s the need for nurturing with a certain cadence. You don’t want to bombard them with too many hard offers. But in PLG, it’s different. There’s a rhythm to it. It’s okay to hit them with offers like, “Sign up for a demo” or “Sign up for a free account.” That works quite well.
[00:10:22] Joanna Nguyen: Even things like list purchases—initially, I was against cold emails, but they can work. It’s all about testing and learning to see what does work.
[00:10:38] Joanna Nguyen: Mobile is also huge in SMB because their lives are more integrated. They aren’t tied to a 9-to-5 in front of a computer. When I talk to restaurateurs or solopreneurs, their life is their business. It’s all connected to their social channels. They’re browsing personal content while also looking for business ideas. You need to be in that mindset when selling to them.
[00:10:56] Joanna Nguyen: They’re looking on their personal stuff as well as looking at ideas for work. And so, you have to be in that mindset when you’re selling to them. That makes sense.
[00:11:03] Steve MacDonald: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things I love that you said is breaking the traditional B2B mold. You mentioned that the SMB market behaves a lot like consumers. Amazon helped train B2B buyers to expect B2C levels of experience. We live in a world where we need to learn from B2C to apply it to B2B.
[00:11:29] Steve MacDonald: If I can get something from my Prime account in two days, or even the same day, I expect that kind of service.
[00:11:37] Joanna Nguyen: Exactly, and the same level of customer service. Sometimes even better. The stakes are higher in enterprise—of course, I expect premium support. But I also expect it instantly, like a consumer would. It’s just ingrained in our daily lives.
[00:11:54] Steve MacDonald: You moved from cybersecurity to Amazon and the SMB world, and now you’re CMO at Willow, which isn’t an SMB market. It’s a longer sales cycle, more traditional B2B ABM marketing. Without revealing your strategies, how are you thinking about transitioning what you learned in the SMB world to your current role? What advice do you have for those of us in a traditional ABM model?
[00:12:36] Joanna Nguyen: That’s a great question. Some folks come in with a playbook, thinking they’ll rebuild the team in a certain way because they’ve done it before. But what I’ve learned, maybe because I’ve switched industries and customer types, is that you really need to assess where the organization needs the most help.
[00:12:59] Joanna Nguyen: Is everyone talking about the product the same way? Do they understand the value? Can they articulate and quantify that? Because if your company can’t do that, how can your customers? That’s a key element.
[00:13:18] Joanna Nguyen: Also, I think about the channel mix and ask, “Where does the organization need me most?” That can vary depending on the customer and company. There are some general considerations, but it’s important to adapt.
[00:13:33] Joanna Nguyen: And so, one of them might be, as I’m thinking about it, how do I think about channel diversification? That’s a clear lesson I’ve learned over time, going into all these different areas. It’s so easy to say, “Hey, we’re good at our core channels,” whether that’s Google, Meta, or email, and just lean on those.
[00:13:50] Joanna Nguyen: What I’ve learned is it’s so easy for something to go wrong with one of the channels, whether it’s an algorithm that changes or something else. So, how are you constantly testing new channels to learn what works for your customer set?
[00:14:04] Joanna Nguyen: Yes, rely on those, but it’s essential to keep building more competencies in other areas. I feel like that remains true no matter what. I think a key aspect is articulating your value and ensuring you have clear ways to quantify it. That’s a consistent exercise.
[00:14:25] Joanna Nguyen: Another point is how you build for modularity, or in other words, how you build to scale. There’s obviously a technological component to that—building a program that can support 50 customers today but potentially support a million in the future.
[00:14:42] Joanna Nguyen: There’s a technical way to build that. This is where my marketing ops background comes in, but it’s also about thinking strategically. If you’re going after a particular value pillar or segment, how do you use that as a rallying cry for your team, or even just for yourself or a small group, especially when you’re starting out?
[00:15:03] Joanna Nguyen: That approach allows you to build content, learn the rhythms, test with your sales team, refine messaging, and figure out what works. It’s a learning process. Then, you keep that content as evergreen, even if you shift focus next quarter. Building from scratch means constantly building on top of what you already have, making it additive rather than starting over each time. You can’t do everything at once, especially with a small team.
[00:15:38] Steve MacDonald: Yeah, I love the idea of experimenting because as soon as we keep relying on the same old things, like you said, an algorithm is going to change. We used to do a lot of Meta marketing, and it changed all the time. What worked before just doesn’t anymore.
[00:15:54] Steve MacDonald: There are new channels, new trends, new technologies, and new paths to market happening all the time, so we have to experiment with them.
[00:16:03] Steve MacDonald: Now, I’m going to throw you a bit of a curveball. We didn’t talk about this earlier, but we live in a world, especially with B2B buyers, where the buying committee has grown significantly over the last 10 to 15 years. It’s not at all like an SMB situation.
[00:16:23] Steve MacDonald: All of a sudden, we have to enable our B2B buyers who are selling internally. They run into issues with procurement or other hurdles, and at the same time, they’re waiting longer and longer to engage with us.
[00:16:38] Steve MacDonald: The self-service B2B buyer trend, which Gartner and others talk about, is real. More than 80% of buyers don’t want to talk to us until they’ve nearly finalized their consideration set.
[00:16:48] Steve MacDonald: So, how do we reach them? How do we combat that? Not all of us are household names that automatically get considered. If we don’t engage early, we might be out of the picture.
[00:17:06] Steve MacDonald: How do we approach this, especially in an ABM process? I’m not sure how well-known Willow is, but I’m sure it’s something you’re thinking about as the CMO.
[00:17:15] Joanna Nguyen: That’s where I think you have to bring the conversation higher up in the funnel. It’s about thought leadership, but also about helping them solve problems. A customer-centric approach is key—how do I help my customers do what they need to do? People trust that.
[00:17:33] Joanna Nguyen: A lot of companies, like HubSpot, have done a phenomenal job of creating valuable content. If I need to solve something as an SMB marketer, I know HubSpot has content I can use.
[00:17:45] Joanna Nguyen: It’s challenging to build that level of content, but we should think about how to help customers self-serve because they’ll do it no matter what. We need to provide the content they need to make decisions without relying too much on gating everything. Play around with that.
[00:18:00] Joanna Nguyen: From my experience at Amazon, I learned the value of collaborating with product teams to embed marketing within the product itself. Marketing can play a role in the onboarding process or within signups—these are all touchpoints where customers self-serve.
[00:18:13] Joanna Nguyen: Can marketing be ingrained in those moments? Not all companies give marketing the opportunity to do that, but as a leader, I believe in building that bridge.
[00:18:48] Steve MacDonald: Oh, I love that. I think more about your longitudinal customer engagement and doing things that are not necessarily traditional. What the CMO is going to do in the marketing function is going to be what you’re bringing up right now. So, I’m going to let you roll with that. What is this idea? This longitudinal customer engagement and marketing’s role in this?
[00:19:08] Joanna Nguyen: Yeah. I think of it as spanning across the journey. What I get is that 360-degree view. It’s making sure that you’re the centerpiece of how to bridge between sales, any CX team, and the product. Marketing can be that hub. So, how do you help create that seat for yourself to have those conversations? One of the things that worked well when we were at Amazon was figuring out the process from the time they signed up to when they started purchasing.
[00:19:39] Joanna Nguyen: We found all sorts of things in that little onboarding process. You have to be verified as a business. What is the first screen you see? My team managed that part when signing up for an Amazon business account and logging in. That screen was owned by my team from a marketing perspective.
[00:19:53] Joanna Nguyen: So, what does that need to look like? Throughout that journey, there’s so much that goes into it. You’d be surprised. We spent so much time on it, even though the customer probably only sees it for a few minutes. But the time invested makes a huge difference. That’s where we found the gold.
[00:20:11] Steve MacDonald: Tell me more about your ways of thinking. That’s one fantastic way of finding that gold in the customer journey—understanding their journey and helping them earlier in the process, unlocking that. That’s the key to self-service. So, what are some other ways you unlock those insights?
[00:20:32] Joanna Nguyen: Yeah, we talked a bit about the word “longitudinal.” I love that word. It’s about changing the way you view your marketing metrics over time.
[00:20:41] Joanna Nguyen: This is probably no surprise, but it doesn’t stop at creating an MQL. It definitely doesn’t stop at an opportunity, or at closing a sale. The goal is to create an active customer that renews or stays with the business. When you shift that as your goalpost and set up the right instrumentation to see that data, it changes how you view your team and activities.
[00:21:03] Joanna Nguyen:That’s where it starts, from the top down. At ChowNow, we built full-funnel reporting where I could see within 3, 6, or 9 months how much a customer was spending that we brought in through marketing. That changes your perspective. Even during the sales process, when discussing onboarding expectations or things down the road, marketing can start embedding those elements earlier.
[00:21:33] Joanna Nguyen: Marketing has the opportunity to build content that speaks to that part of the funnel and the second funnel that gets created. I think the data and that mindset shift in how you look at things is huge.
[00:21:47] Steve MacDonald: Absolutely. I love that because, in the traditional world, marketing’s involvement ended at the MQL.
[00:21:53] Steve MacDonald: Chuck it over the fence, and now, sales, it’s up to you. What you’re talking about is that we’re supposed to own revenue. We’re supposed to own the pipeline along with the rest of the C-suite.
[00:22:03] Steve MacDonald: A true CRO these days oversees the entire go-to-market motion. So, marketing, customer success, and sales—we all have to be players in owning that pipeline.
[00:22:12] Steve MacDonald: You’re saying the pipeline doesn’t end with a closed deal. It goes far beyond that. I love that perspective. What I want to ask is, what haven’t we covered? We’ve gone over a lot of topics, but what haven’t we talked about that you think is important for the audience to know?
[00:22:33] Joanna Nguyen: Yeah, that’s a great question. We haven’t talked much about team building, I guess. We can talk a little about how to build and scale a team. I’ve been in roles where I came in with early marketing, maybe a small team, and we grew into a much larger, global team.
[00:22:47] Joanna Nguyen: One of the things I would say is that I think marketing structures shift back and forth. You’ve got channel owners versus objective owners.
[00:22:55] Joanna Nguyen: I’ve always been a big fan of objective owners, especially early on. I mean it in the sense of, you’re going to own customer activation. So, having goal sets around that is important, especially when you have such a lean team. It gives them more freedom to say, “Hey, I’m going to learn different channels” or “I’m going to think about content differently,” and you can build players who may not necessarily have that in their background.
[00:23:29] Joanna Nguyen: At some point, you need to shift and say, yes, I need more of a services group as the organization grows. But early on, making sure people have clear objectives as objective owners is huge.
[00:23:46] Joanna Nguyen: That unlocks a lot of potential for individuals. That’s one of the things I’ve found works well as a team leader.
[00:23:53] Steve MacDonald: What you’re saying is, instead of a top-down approach where I own everything and the team just executes, you, as the CMO, are giving ownership to others. This places responsibility on them to work hard, but it also makes them feel like they’re not just a cog, but an important part of the overall team and its success.
[00:24:20] Steve MacDonald: When people feel important, it’s a big step forward in terms of their long-term growth in the company and their sense of contribution. So, I love that idea of owning objectives.
[00:24:34] Steve MacDonald: I have another important question for you because I want to make sure I get it in before we wrap up the podcast. You’ve done so much and been involved in many very successful companies. What are you most proud of when you look back at your career?
[00:24:51] Joanna Nguyen: Yeah, it’s a great question. My time at Amazon. It tops the list because it was phenomenal to build something that grew so quickly in such a short period.
[00:25:01] Joanna Nguyen: It’s one of the fastest growing startups that was within Amazon for it to now be a 35 billion global business. It was 25 billion when I was there over five years, but I think just being a part of that and owning that customer growth team, that was really an exciting time for me.
[00:25:18] Joanna Nguyen: I’m a problem solver. I like to build. So, just being able to say, “How do we build this? How do we handle systems that don’t actually support millions of customers?” Those were things I worked on because traditional Amazon systems didn’t support B2B.
[00:25:31] Joanna Nguyen: Our segmentation tools didn’t support B2B because they were geared more toward consumers. Having to build that was very exciting, and there are certainly projects within that I’m very proud of.
[00:25:41] Steve MacDonald: With everything we’ve talked about today, the human brain can’t retain too much information at once. If there were a single takeaway you wanted people to remember from our conversation, what would it be?
[00:26:03] Joanna Nguyen: I think the one I’d emphasize again is that it’s not just about bringing a playbook and rinsing and repeating it everywhere.
[00:26:10] Joanna Nguyen: I feel like it’s really about testing and learning. We talked about building from scratch, right? Of course, as chief marketing officers, there are things we know work, and we can bring that knowledge in, which is great. But there’s also an opportunity to break from the mold.
[00:26:24] Joanna Nguyen: I learned that working in the PLG motion or with SMBs—situations where you have to test and test, almost dispelling your own beliefs. I think it’s important to be willing to try something new or admit when a consumer tool or approach won’t work.
[00:26:45] Joanna Nguyen: Those are things I find important. Every customer interaction—every email, every ad—is an opportunity to test. If we’re not testing and learning, we’re not doing our jobs.
[00:27:00] Joanna Nguyen: That’s a philosophy I hold: every email should include a test, and we should use those learnings to build on what we do.
[00:27:10] Steve MacDonald: I love that because it’s easy to fall back on the playbook. Testing means you’re constantly doing more work, right?
[00:27:17] Steve MacDonald: You’re constantly forcing yourself to learn and not just rinse and repeat. It takes more effort, and as humans, we like to rely on what we’re familiar with.
[00:27:28] Joanna Nguyen: It’s slower too. Sometimes it’s more work or there’s more red tape, but ultimately, it allows customers to guide how they want to be marketed.
[00:27:39] Joanna Nguyen: At the end of the day, that’s the most important thing—let the customers guide those decisions. We spend countless hours in meetings debating approaches when we could just let the customers tell us. That’s what I love about testing.
[00:27:51] Joanna Nguyen: And it’s not just about messaging or choosing between two emails. It’s about testing new channels and building competencies in new areas. Does something work or not? That’s especially important when you’re building from scratch and willing to break the mold.
[00:28:07] Steve MacDonald: I love it. I know there will be many follow-up questions because we’ve had such a good conversation. Would it be okay if we shared your LinkedIn profile so people could reach out to you?
[00:28:20] Joanna Nguyen: Absolutely. It’s Ms. Joanna Nguyen, and we can share that with everyone.
[00:28:24] Steve MacDonald: Fantastic. Joanna, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your insights. This is how we learn—through ongoing education and testing, but also by learning from the experiences of others. I appreciate you sharing yours with us.
[00:28:43] Joanna Nguyen: Awesome. Thanks so much for having me, Steve. I appreciate it.