Brand vs. Demand, Pipeline Pressure, and GTM Essentials: A Live Coaching Session with Bryna Dilman

#30 - In this episode of Growth Activated, Mandy Walker sits down with Bryna Dilman—a seasoned Growth & Demand Gen leader—for our very first live coaching session on the show.

We tackle four questions many B2B marketing leader are wrestling with right now - and break down practical, real-world strategies you can take straight back to your team.

Inside, we cover:

• Evolving roles in the AI era - are generalists making a comeback, or do specialists still win?
• Digital marketing in a noisy world - how to break through oversaturation and build real trust and connection.
• Brand vs. demand - why brand gets deprioritized, and how CMOs can prove the multiplier effect to execs and CFOs.
• Go-to-market essentials - the baseline foundations every team needs: ICP, target account list, messaging, offers, and a clear path to sales meetings.

If you’ve ever felt like your channels are noisy, your brand work keeps slipping to the bottom of the list, and you’re still under pressure to deliver pipeline, this candid conversation will hit home.

🎧 Tune in to hear what’s working, what’s changing, and how today’s best marketing leaders are evolving their playbooks to drive growth.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Growth Activated: Coaching for B2B Marketing Leaders
• 5:45 Bryna Dillman’s Career Journey: From Nonprofit to Growth Marketing & Demand Gen
• 9:46 Generalist vs Specialist: Evolving Marketing Roles in the AI Era
• 15:15 Digital Marketing in a Noisy World: Building Trust and Human Connection
• 21:37 Brand vs Demand: Why CMOs Must Prove the Multiplier Effect
• 28:23 Go-to-Market Strategy Essentials: ICP, Personas, and Target Account Lists
• 35:05 Sales and Marketing Alignment: Defining MQLs, SQLs, and Pipeline Ownership
• 41:12 Marketing Strategy in Practice: Offers, Messaging, and Clear Buyer Journeys
• 47:29 Pipeline Generation Metrics: Why Meetings Matter More Than Vanity KPIs
• 48:55 Leadership Lessons for Marketing Leaders: Transparency, Coaching, and Team Growth

Transcript

00:00 — Welcome to Growth Activated: Coaching for B2B Marketing Leaders

Welcome to Growth Activated.  I'm Mandy Walker, your host with 15 years of experience leading marketing teams ranging from small startups to large service organizations.  I've built high performing teams of all sizes and have seen firsthand how fast the landscape is evolving,  making marketing leadership more complex than ever.  Today, I help marketing leaders elevate their strategies,  lead with confidence and build careers they love.

00:28

If you're ready to drive impact and unlock growth for yourself and your company, you're in the right place.  Let's get started.  If you've ever felt like your marketing channels are noisy,  your brand work isn't getting prioritized, and yet you're still on the hook to deliver pipeline, you're not alone. Hey everyone, welcome back to Growth Activated. I'm your host, Mandy Walker. And today we're kicking off with something brand new, our first ever live coaching series.

00:55

Or I sit down with real marketing leaders for an unscripted coaching style conversation. Our guest today is Bryna Dillman,  a seasoned growth and demand gen leader who came ready with four big questions that so many marketing leaders are thinking about right now. How are roles evolving and are generalists making a comeback or a specialization still king in the AI era? Where digital marketing fits in a noisy world and how to actually build trust and connection.

01:25

Why brand work so often gets deprioritized and how to make the case for brand and demand as a multiplier effect. And the go-to-market essentials, the foundational pieces every marketing team needs in place to grow with clarity. This episode is part coaching, part coffee talk, and it's packed with insights you can take straight back to your team. Let's get into it. Hey, Bryna, welcome to Growth Activated. I'm so excited to have you here today.

01:52

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really looking forward to this incredible conversation with you. Yeah, me too. First, first sort of coaching and coffee chat. I'm really excited about this one. And so before we dive in, I'd love for you to tell our audience a little bit about your background, some of your career story and where you're at today.

02:15

So I actually started in the nonprofit sector for many years working with large organizations, health charities, which I absolutely loved  and really used a lot of the data to help me put together our marketing plans and programs  and ended up getting recruited into one of the softwares that the nonprofit used because I am always constantly looking at research and where is the industry going and where are other industries going? oh

02:44

to ensure that we're never gonna be left behind. We understand, you know, what should we be capitalizing  on, et cetera.  And this tech software company thought that I would be a really great person for their product department, their product marketing, because I knew the customer so well.  So I worked in that for a little while, but ah ended up giving so much time and advice to the marketing side of the business, because that was my background and ended up getting moved into

03:14

the marketing side of the tech software. And then from there, I actually was recruited a bunch of times to additional software organizations,  worked for a  bunch of VC backed  small tech startups in the B2B space,  and really have learned so much from working with  really, really small, tiny teams to then moving to enterprise large organizations,  where not only is the team large, but also the customer.

03:44

and the customer journey for those sales are very different. So I've had a very interesting kind of introduction to the tech space, but I love it. Yeah, yeah. Wildly different, right? Yeah, very different. I did the opposite. I left a large, well, I should say I started at probably a small company of 50 million and then we grew to 750 million, which...

04:12

for me at the time felt very large. And then I went to like a 1 million in ARR startup.  And wildly different, wildly different. So it sounds like you almost did  the opposite of that.  Yeah, the learnings, right?  Both ways I'm sure is almost, yeah, shocking in some ways, but  unbelievable for really understanding marketing for various sides of the business, which again, you can bring to any part of any business. And I think, yeah, it's nice to have.

04:55 — Bryna Dillman’s Career Journey: From Nonprofit to Growth Marketing & Demand Gen

those different types of experiences. I'm so curious. What to you, what was the biggest difference  between those two experiences that  you've learned? The biggest difference  is silos. So the bigger the organization,  not only is the silos between marketing teams, but within other parts of the organization.

05:10

so incredible about being in the small startups is that you're so much closer to the product, the product roadmap and what's happening, which for marketing is essential to really understand the product, to be able to sell it.  And when you're in such a large organization with product marketing, under marketing, and then product, and then product management, and then  it  just creates so many layers that just getting almost an understanding of the product was so

05:40

much more difficult and then working together as a marketing team to making sure that you're on the same page, driving the same  bus to ensure that  what marketing activities the company is doing reflects what you're actually trying to achieve as a business. And that  for me was so different. What about you? Was it similar or different?  Totally. Yeah, I'm trying to think.  mean, I...

06:06

I am a scaler. I love to scale and grow. So building was, I think I realized for me, building from scratch was not my favorite thing to do. I'm glad I was put to the test to do that.  Um, and proved to myself that, Hey, after, you know, managing a large team that was actually doing everything, I still have it in me to do the work itself,  which was, you know, it was good, but at the same time it was.

06:34

heart. It made me realize I'm an operator at heart versus  I guess a builder in a way. But  I completely agree with you. I  actually, the company I went to, um both of the co-founders were previous mentors and colleagues of mine  and the head of product was like one of my best friends. And so we were  really tight. then the CTO and co-founder brought in the CFO who he had worked with many times. So we were

07:04

We were a really tight team. And I will say  to, to your point, uh, I was more integrated into the business than I had ever been at the large.  Um, just the, know, even understanding the health of the business, the business metrics, the,  learned so much about capacity planning and how a CFO is building like a tops down plan and how to pair that with the marketing plan.

07:30

There are amazing learnings for me that I've been able to take back to larger companies and insert myself to make sure that  marketing is really a business leader at the end of the day, but  wildly different for sure. So,  and it's so funny because the scaling, sometimes  I like to do it from scratch. So I've  worked with organizations where they had no website, they had no pipeline, they had no CRM  and starting it from scratch.

08:00

is  humbling and there's definitely capacity issues and challenges, but it's also maybe for me and my personality, it's like, I can still do this and I can support team members because when they don't know what to do or they get stuck, I know how to do it because I've done it or I've just done it or I'm still supporting them because it's so small. um So it almost makes me feel like, okay, I can still  do this right now. So I like the challenge of  both.

08:30

But it's, yes, so interesting. So, yeah. Well, and I think it actually transitions really nicely into probably your first question. So I'll let you, I'll let you ask that and then we can keep, keep going on this. Yes. So  again, I really want to talk to you about how marketing goals have evolved. You know, 10 years ago, many marketers, I say we're generalists. One person was running email events, content ads.

08:56 — Generalist vs Specialist: Evolving Marketing Roles in the AI Era

But today teams are split into  specialized functions. We have performance, paid media, demand generation, which is the leads of pipeline, marketing operations,  content brand, product marketing, analytics, et cetera.  What  do you see  good, bad, whatever for this differentiation again from what it used to be years ago? Yeah, absolutely. Well, and even now I feel like there's so many ah

09:26

people questioning whether generalists will make a comeback now that we have AI, right? And  generalists are being even more powerful. And I think to me, there's uh a time and a place for generalists and specialists, and both are incredibly important. It actually ties in nicely to what we were just talking about.  I think generalists work really well  for smaller companies. And as you grow and as you mature and as the functions need to mature and expand,

09:54

it's time to bring in specialists. One of the things I've noticed I should say in terms of positioning ourselves. So rather than positioning ourselves as a specialist or a generalist,  I think what works really well is when we position ourselves as who we help and what we help them with. And so not necessarily the how. I think the how is what's always changing about marketing. Is it PR that matters today? Is it events that matters tomorrow? Is it social that matters? But I think just even as a hiring

10:22

leader myself, right? When I'm building out a team, I want to know that someone matches the organization, like where we're at at that point. So are you, it sounds like you're really specialized in B2B SaaS startups, right? And you're probably specialized in taking a SaaS startup from a certain amount of revenue to another amount of revenue. And like, that's your sweet spot. And then if you take it a little bit farther, I think the...

10:48

I sort of look at umbrella categories. Like to me, there's four major umbrella categories within marketing,  right or wrong, but I group them as growth and demand, brand and communications, product marketing, and ops.  And there's so much opportunity within that. But I think it's, to me, it's more important to say, I help this type of organization grow from this stage to this stage within one of those four categories. And then the how.

11:17

can be flexed, but I think it's more about being a strategic partner right now. ah about, you again, being a generalist or a specialist. Does that resonate with you? No, I really, I like that. And I like having marketing fall under those buckets. Cause again, depending on the size of the team, you could have one person or you could have multiple people or you could have multiple teams.  I think the interesting part  is again, when you're growing up in marketing and you're doing marketing, you are

11:48

again in the past, you're mostly a generalist.  I love the opportunity for leaders to take courses and to learn more about the specifics  of each role. But what I see or what I worry about sometimes for organizations is they're going so specific and the leader really has to be that generalist, almost like a T-shape to know like, yes, the leader might be specific in demand or whatever.

12:13

But as long as they have that breadth of knowledge for product, for demand, for content, for  even the customer journey, then you really have somebody that can make sure that you're all integrating, you're talking, you're working together. Because the challenge I've found sometimes is when you have one particular role,  brands just writing content for content. Well, the demand team needs to  understand how is that

12:41

content being used for campaigns, for life cycle marketing campaigns, how are we using that in events? And when you have a team that's kind of so specialized, they don't necessarily understand the functions of the other team. And therefore what they're doing doesn't integrate. And therefore you have completely separate  marketing companies almost working as one team. Yeah, totally. And something you said made me

13:10

made me think, so I certainly have my areas of special specialization as a CMO that I lean into and those are my superpowers and my strengths.  But one of the things I agree with you that you've got to be T shaped enough to know enough about the overarching function. But for me, it's with the end goal of surrounding myself with experts. So I need to know enough about the function to know that the person I have in place is a trusted expert  and that we're aligned.

13:38

From there, they can do their thing and we can all make each other look great. But I'm a big believer that I'd rather have smarter, smarter people around me to make those  decisions. But I need to know enough to know that they are the right person in that seat.  The other thing that you were sharing, I think for me that what I would say we should all be over indexing on in terms of skill sets right now is.

14:05

course, AI and automation, right? I whether you're a generalist and you use that as a weapon to be a more dangerous and powerful generalist, or whether you're a specialist and you are really able to leverage it to go 10 times deeper, right? We all need to be leveraging it. I think that's a given. But the other thing I think in terms of how do we stay relevant and valuable in the new era of AI and automation within those areas,

14:25 — Digital Marketing in a Noisy World: Building Trust and Human Connection

I think it comes back to,  you're right, like  the human side of the leadership, the collaboration and the partnership. How are we as leaders bringing inter-departments together and then also cross collaborating with other departments? Because AI can't do that. AI can't see the bigger picture and understand the problems the way that we do. And it's funny, I see this actually, um

15:04

I do one of the things that I do often for clients is this 360 degree marketing assessment. And I interview  C level execs at,  um, at within the organization. And I'll probably do anywhere from 10 to 15, sometimes 20 interviews. And if I dump those interviews into chat, GBT and say, tell me what the key findings are. me the key problem statements. It's actually my perspective is so different than.

15:31

It's like they will pull it out, it'll be basic problem statements. It'll be the obvious stuff. It's not the critical business problems that need to be solved. And then that other stuff will kind of follow. so, yeah, I mean, that's such a, one, it's like job security for all of us. How can we make sure, but two, it just forces us to up level in terms of how are we viewing the business strategy? How are we viewing and collaborating with our partners and like the human side of.

16:00

of marketing, um but the skill sets themselves, I think those will continue to ebb  and flow. Yeah. And again, it's  making sure also as that T-shaped leader, those that are so focused on performance or  brand or content,  how do you ensure that they learn the other parts of the business? Because if they want to be that leader one day, again,

16:26

you want to make sure that that leader has that breadth of knowledge and be able to understand how can they actually learn everything again. They don't need to be the specialist in every single, um you know, industry, but could be able to understand how to even leverage your team and push them to that next level. It's just so interesting because it's very different than what it used to be years ago. mean, I B2B SaaS wasn't really.

16:55

as big  then. yeah, leveraging AI for all of this is so is  needed. And there's so many conversations now about AI taking over marketing.  And it's so interesting because there's,  know, it's who's gonna put it into chat. Like there has to be the human side of it. Just even think about logistics.  Yeah. So  it's it's a really interesting conversation. But I love putting things into chat. GPT, especially websites.

17:25

what does this company do?  Just tell me.  As I'm a fifth grader, think there's like a TV show.  Talk to me like a fifth grader. oh And then you're like,  okay, why aren't we saying that? Right?  Yeah, it's a really great job telling you you're  like, yeah, exactly showing you the perception. And then you're like, that is not what we want to be. That's not who we want to be.  But I, and one of the things you were sharing earlier about how do we elevate the team,

17:54

You know, sometimes I often feel like I'm a broken record about this and it's the most obvious thing, but you would be so surprised how many organizations, marketing organizations I walk into and the people who are executing don't know  what the business goals are. And they actually don't have unified marketing goals and they don't understand how their role specifically maps up to that goal. I mean, in a lot of instances, people don't even know.

18:21

the marketing budget that they have at their disposal. And I'm  such a fan  of transparency and over communication, because if I can get the team to your point, like it's not about, to me, it's not about telling SEO what their SEO budget is. I'll tell them that, but I'll also create transparency around what our entire budget is and what we're focused on and how that maps to goals, because you wouldn't believe sometimes team members, mean, one, they have empathy for it. Then they realize, oh, I'm a part of the greater team and

18:51

Sometimes people even say, well, so-and-so may actually be able to use my budget better than I can. We've got some overage. If that's going to help us achieve our goals, let's move it there. And if they don't have that understanding or visibility, they can't be a part of the bigger picture. They can't be a part of the bigger team.  And so for me, like, that's the easiest thing we should all be doing as leaders is just  open up, you know, be more transparent and connect the dots for people on

19:20

how they're a part of the bigger vision. Yeah, I've heard you speak about that before and it's amazing because  that is where I love that breaks down silos right away when you can share this isn't my budget. This is the budget for marketing. And again, together, looking at where you are in terms of your metrics.

19:39

And great, we're already above or we're on par with this particular  goal, but this is a little lower. Hey, we've got some budget over here. Can we move it? Usually that's the leader that does that.  But I love how you talk about the whole team really seeing that transparently and having those discussions together. And that's where I think a marketing team, big, small, whatever,  can work together to achieving those metrics if they're  all understanding of one budget, one goal.

20:09

It's so helpful.  Good.  All right. What else do you got for me? OK. So again, there is  so  much  noise everywhere. The role of digital marketing in a crowded space. Audience are skipping ads. Again, this is an opinion. LinkedIn feels oversaturated.  I've read studies from P &G, Chase, Uber, eBay showing cutting digital ad spend didn't.

20:47 — Brand vs Demand: Why CMOs Must Prove the Multiplier Effect

hurt their outcomes.  So  love your take. Where do you see digital fitting best now? What's your take?  Yeah. Well, it's  interesting. I feel all of those things too, just anecdotally. And even as I'm building growth activated from scratch,  it feels noisier than ever. And I have these conversations with myself all the time. uh

21:07

To me, think  the two  in the face of all the noise and saturation, to me, there's two major priorities. And one is how do we build trust and credibility in this noisy market? I think that's more important now than ever. And everyone can use AI to drive content. But like, how are you and your brand  really building trust and credibility? And I'll talk about a few things within that. But the second one  is connection.

21:37

The human connection is going to be even more and more important. Whether we're leveraging digital channels for connection or not, I think to me it's, I think the way in which we leverage digital marketing has to evolve and it has to evolve with two of those purposes front and center. And so if I go back to building trust and credibility,  don't, you've probably heard that or seen these stats, but people are trusting the LLMs to make recommendations more than they are their friends and their family right now.

22:04

I just saw Accenture released a report where 72 % of consumers are leveraging AI and 30 % trust AI over their friends or over their colleagues to make decisions. certainly, LLM optimization is high on the list in terms of how we can be building trust and credibility in the marketplace. even below that, one of the things that was super interesting to me

22:33

I saw the CMO of, I think it's Kanji.  I may not be pronouncing them, pronouncing that correctly. They're a software development company.  And the CMO was talking about how in order to build trust and credibility for their brand, they launched a completely different content platform  off of their brand. So they didn't want it to feel like a company blog. ah But they have this like original, it's on its own domain, own name, own brand. And that's where they're publishing a ton of content for their

23:02

IT and development  community and the LLMs, craziest thing that's happening. One,  the content engine is,  it sounds like it's performing really well for their audience, but two, the LLMs are now referring to it as a source of truth and as a publication that is really trusted. And then that's  offering a lot of brand value back to Kanji because obviously Kanji is talked about and as a topic of conversation in this content engine.  So.

23:31

That's just one example.  It's wild. think the things that we could be doing  and, you know,  so to me, it's again, it's digital's not dead. We just have to evolve. How can we focus  on ah more things like digital PR and content and social that is really putting forward uh trust and credibility into the marketplace in these unique ways. Who knows whether the LLMs will figure that out. Like it reminds me of like,

23:59

SEO when you always figure out an SEO hack and then the algorithm.  But we should be trying, we should be creative.  I think the second thing again, the connection, the human connection, maybe it's not digital, maybe it is, but even just the idea of creating community  and  events are going to be really powerful, whether they're virtual or whether they're in person, but

24:23

how can we bring people together and have conversations to break through the noise? And how can a digital director encourage and support that to be done? So I don't know if that helps. think it's just how we,  the old tactics, you're right, are not working or breaking through the noise, but how can we pivot what we're doing  to meet our buyers where they're at? Yeah, and  we live in a digital world.

24:51

people work from home, like we read digital newspapers, we research online. So I don't think digital is dead, but it's such an interesting conversation to fully understand how do you break through that noise and more isn't necessarily better. It's quality, it's really making sure you're communicating in the right way. And yeah, just your take, I think makes so much sense and it's prioritizing what makes sense for your business, but

25:21

It's also figuring out not that spray and pray. And what's so interesting is when you're just pushing tons and tons of content and ads out there in this huge space and you're hoping that they know you, your ROI is going to be way less than if they do know you. Again, how do you spend money on brand without that ROI direct connection is interesting. But yeah.

25:49

Again, when you see these large companies cutting budgets, it's not necessarily cutting digital out. I think one of the organizations found that they were posting on a ton of websites that just had no connection to their brand. So they reduced the amount of websites that they were on, but were much more targeted. Again, other organizations, I think it was one of the apps were on a whole bunch of fake apps. So once they cut that out, again, it was more calculated of who they're communicating to.

26:17

And then again, making sure that your content makes sense  and may, sure, resonate and that it is solving a pain, but again, not just pushing it all out there so that it just gets ignored. It's just a very interesting conversation today in this very busy marketplace where B2B SaaS businesses are popping up everywhere  almost, you know, daily, a new business, a new company, a new series A, B, C,  and

26:47

especially with AI, feel like it's very similar the terminology or an AI based enablement X or it's dynamic organization, similar lingo. So figuring out the right language  to the right company with the right target in the right spaces doesn't mean digital is gone. means being more calculated.  yeah, that's my food. And brand, absolutely. And I think it's a great point that

27:16

brand is more important than ever. You used to be able to get performance and be able to run lead generation ads and  it worked and you didn't have to have any brand ads running and now that is not the case. We have to be more focused and differentiated than ever before, for sure. And that was almost my next question, like brand awareness versus demand gen.

27:33 — Go-to-Market Strategy Essentials: ICP, Personas, and Target Account Lists

You know, we know strong brand awareness drive sales, yet many companies focus only on those leads. So yeah, I'd love to dig into your take on why brand building seems deprioritized. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, certainly there's the obvious answer. I think that it's hard to track and measure. It's almost like we've over-corrected. We went from, you know, early marketing days where

28:06

Nothing was trackable. We were just doing a bunch of activities. No one really knew the outcomes of marketing. And then we kind of swung the other direction where it like, we figured out how to track a lot.  So  everything must be trackable and everything must prove ROI. And if it doesn't, you know, it's not worth doing.  And  I really feel like we're kind of course correcting right now. I see a lot of brands course correcting and realizing.

28:31

Brand is still very important. By not doing brand, we've actually probably hurt ourselves. We may not be able to quantify how much we've hurt ourselves,  but we anecdotally  know that we've hurt ourselves. So it's interesting. I'm happy to see the pendulum seems to be settling back in the middle of it. You know, one of the things that there's this really great report, I'll have to send it to you and I'll link to it in the show notes, but it talks about this brand times demand is it actually a multiplier effect.

29:00

It's not an addition. um the report shows there's a 90 % increase in your performance marketing and your demand marketing when you also have brand advertising running.  And when you don't, it's, you know, in some instances, it can actually decrease your performance by like 45%. So the swing of impact is really wide. um

29:23

And that is something I've actually used to talk to CFOs about and actually say, Hey, I'll use incrementality as a way to measure brand, right? If you've got it, the unfortunate thing about brand is you have to have it running for long enough to actually see, you know, you can't just turn it on for a month and then see those types of results. It's probably more of like a six month thing, minimally.

29:46

But a lot of times, mean, CFOs are data-driven people. They understand industry stats and benchmarks. um And I have not encountered a CFO that will disregard industry data. I think just leaning on,  in terms of investing in it, knowing we know that we need to, but ah I've seen success in terms of communicating the output with leveraging  industry benchmarks. How have you seen success with running?

30:16

Stats, uh I  love what you said, it's being able to communicate to the right person who owns that budget, again, having that relationship with that leadership um and making sure you're able to communicate clearly. think recently there was  a benchmarker came out with reports. They interviewed a bunch of B2B SaaS  marketing organizations  and they talked about, I think companies that hit their growth and revenue goals last year spent about 31 % of their budget on demand.

30:46

and 25 % on, oh sorry, that didn't hit their growth revenue, spent 31 % on demand gen and 25 on brand awareness. But in contrast, companies that exceeded their goals and had it the other way around spent 29 % on brand and 23 on demand, 23%. So again, recognizing this is a small group of people that they interviewed in the B2B SaaS marketing space, but recognizing

31:12

when you spend more money on the brand,  actually see longer term, you know, revenue goals being hit with demand.  And yes, also, I think there's a ton of stats that say long term, your actual conversion rates decrease because you're investing in brand. So you're spending less to convert those  companies and those businesses  because they know you, you don't have to explain it. And that takes a longer time, especially depending on

31:42

the enterprise business that you're selling through, even small and medium now really want to make sure that you're reputable, that you are going to be here, right? I'm going to invest in you. I'm to spend money. Is this business going to be here in six months and two years? Right. So there has to be that investment in both and showcasing the data to the right leader. I love what you said is the best possible case. um It depends on the type of business again, in those really small startups.

32:11

if their  goal is to exit IPO to  sell, be acquired, they don't necessarily have that runway to invest in brand. And I think that's the challenge that has to be communicated. It's like, it will happen,  know, but give us the opportunity to showcase how it can be better for long-term for us to sell at a higher rate, all of these things, right?

32:41

But it's an interesting conversation. Totally. I also think we sort of do ourselves a disservice in a way by splitting out brand campaigns versus demand campaigns. To me, it's one campaign. If we've got a segment that we're really trying to break into or expand within, like run a full funnel campaign. And so it's almost a built in brand awareness and equity at the top. And you almost don't even need to break it out.

33:08

in a way in terms of reporting back to execs and this idea of storytelling and how can we get the story to resonate.  I always report  on what's the overarching segment we're trying to break into and what kind of movement did we make.  whether 500 of our target accounts saw our ads, sure, that's brand.

33:30

But it's a part of us breaking into this segment, is the business goal. A business usually wants to sell a new product or break into a new geographic market or whatever it may be. And so let's just combine them. Why do we have to separate it out when we're back to the business?  That's one thing. And then the second thing is certainly it goes back to  the business goals  of what is

33:54

the CEO really care about? What does the C-suite really care about? And often, rather than us saying, packaging something up as a brand campaign, a lot of times they might care to be a market leader. They might care to be, right?  How can we  reframe the language that we're using that really hits home with them  and make it a market leadership campaign? They just need to know what the end game is and how we're progressing towards that end game. So some of it is, feel like how we package up and talk about what we're doing.

34:15 — Sales and Marketing Alignment: Defining MQLs, SQLs, and Pipeline Ownership

to the executives too. And as marketers, we should know how to do that.  We would, we should, but we often don't think about the internal people as personas that we need to learn about. Every leader in function is their own persona. They care about their own things. They have their own way of working  and showing up and idiosyncrasies. And we should be taking the time to learn our internal personas as much as we do our external personas.

34:54

So I agree.  advice.  This has been so fun. Do you have anything else for me? Any what's top of mind for you right now? So I think even just everything we've discussed  goes back to one of the first things that I have been thinking about a lot lately is back to basics.  You know, like  what.

35:20

should, what are the essentials almost every team should have in place knowing every organization is different, you know, whether you're B2B, B2C, what do you need to have in place? And I'm not talking people, I'm not talking roles or teams, but kind of the basics of marketing 101 should be in place for a lot of these organizations, just for even everyone. Like, yes, yes, yes. Okay, there I can grow. This is not.

35:49

I love talking about the basics because  once that's in place, you can play around with  really cool campaigns. You can look at what budget you have to see  where you want to test markets, channels, et cetera. yeah, I'd love your thoughts on what are those essential every team should have? Yeah, absolutely. ah

36:13

Well, I'm totally happy to share.  honestly, you probably have more experiences with this than I do because of small startups and going in and building.  what I will say is I've walked in and have assessed a ton of organizations, mostly a hundred million or higher. And so even what I'm going to say right now is still sometimes blows my mind that I walk in and they don't have these foundations in place. But to me, it's, call it the go-to-market essentials.  I've actually packaged this as it and

36:42

I tell organizations, do not pass go until you have these few things. And they're really obvious things, but I'm happy to run through them. And I'd love to hear your perspective on what I'm missing. For me, think first and foremost is your target list and your target list that's actually based on your ICP and personas. But so often sales might have their list and

37:07

Sometimes it's a bottoms up approach where they've built their own and it's not actually based on an ICP or target personas. And then marketing is broadly targeting ICP stuff. And to me, I'm like, no, no, let's get on the same page. What are the 500 accounts, the thousand accounts, the 10,000 accounts, whatever it is that makes the most sense for how transactional your business is or what your average deal size is? To me, I want the target list, number one. Number two,

37:37

is messaging, the amount of people who don't have some sense  of  messaging, and I think about it in sort of two, there's like some, some critical brand messaging, and then there's the solution messaging. In my world, I call it solution messaging because I'm on like the services organizations, but in, obviously in the tech world product, product marketing messaging, but the amount of people who are trying to run campaigns without having some level of basic messaging.

38:02

what we're trying to put out into the marketplace and what is sales saying? What are we saying? How do those stories come together? Are we telling the same story? What is customer success staying? So it doesn't have to be fancy or formal, but what are those basic points that we want to get out into the marketplace that we're all aligned on? So that's number two. Stop me if I'm, these are like way too obvious. No, I love it. No, and  yeah, no, no, no.

38:27

I I'm sure somebody out there listening is like, I told you we needed to have this.  Okay, I'll keep going. Number three for me is an offer. It's, it could be a content offer. It could be a free trial. It could be,  it could be anything.  It could be a discount on your product, but like, what are we, why now? What are we doing to get in front of buyers that's going to trigger them?

38:52

to do something, take action for us now. So that's,  and again, a lot of people don't have,  and I don't care what the offer is, but like, why should people engage with you? uh A lot of people, a lot of teams don't have that or can't answer that question. We're just doing like this blanket broad outreach and then not seeing anything from it. And then I would say number four and  probably the last one, I'd almost say maybe the last one on my go-to-market sort of essentials list, but is some type of clear journey.

39:21

Do we know how we're gonna get the person to the meeting or how we're gonna get the person to the close deal? I'm not talking about automation. I'm not talking about having it be a fancy journey, but is there a clear step-by-step process that's actually gonna get a new prospect in and get them what they need and close the deal? And again, a lot of people don't have that. So none of this stuff has to be fancy. Frankly, now you're checking if you can help you with a lot of this stuff, but the amount of times I walk in and we're...

39:50

spending a ton of money or we've launched all these demand gen campaigns and we can't answer these questions or sales is running and doing a ton of outbound and we don't have these basic fundamentals in place. I wonder why performance isn't there. no,  I think you completely nailed it. Like to me,  the opportunity is ensuring you have these  really easy pieces in place. I see P

40:22 — Marketing Strategy in Practice: Offers, Messaging, and Clear Buyer Journeys

is the biggest. think going into a business or if you're in a business, especially for marketers, what are you selling? Really understand whether service product, whatever it may be, you might find those nuggets that you don't even realize we're not talking about that actually makes so much sense to the businesses. So really understanding  what is your ICP and make sure everybody is on the same page. And I think one of your,  um,

40:49

discussions, you said something which was amazing is that talk to the sales team and put together, you know, what is an MQL? I know MQLs are not as valued as SQLs, but that's how you get people in the door. And before marketing decides on what that is,  is this the right customer? Is this the right target audience industry? Is this the right size of business for attracting marketing? Yes, we're calling it a marketing qualified lead, but  is this

41:18

qualify lead for the business  and are we all on the same page? So understanding at your business, making sure you're aligned with the teams who are selling it and really understand your customer pain points. So you're not just selling a product or service. What are you actually doing that's making a difference? Cause everybody has

41:40

a platform or a tool that solves this. And if you look at this market, we all, and they all sound similar. What do your customers say? So really going in and speaking to customers, understanding those nuances and for a marketer, that's a dream to really be able to sell the pain you're solving. Again, know, product marketing, content, storytelling brand, fits in, but the pain you're solving is what

42:10

is your differentiator and how you do it is also right. Maybe you are the same as everybody else, but your differentiator is your faster, your quicker 24 seven, you know, support and service. Like there is a differentiator. That is why your business has customers and figuring out what that is, is the basics for me, for the business. You know, along with what you said.

42:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And as you were talking, one of the cool things about my experience that I am so grateful for  is when I went into the B2B SaaS startup, we were selling to CMOs. And so I was that persona and it  really opened up. blew up. Before I was selling to CMOs, I was selling to CTOs.  I don't know who CTOs are. You know, I learned a lot about them.

43:00

Um, but I'm not that persona and there was something so magical about being doing marketing for myself. That  really encouraged me. Like, uh really blew open how I view marketing today because we should be learning all of that. Sometimes we may not have an interest in learning.  I mean, I'll be the first to say I didn't have a huge interest in learning like a CISO versus a CIO versus. uh

43:27

what they all care about and what they don't care about. And, you know, at some point you just kind of gloss over on it, or at least I did.  But selling to CMOs was such a special experience for me because I became a product marketer where I had never really been before and I was able to be successful at it. ah And so anyways,  that's neither here nor there, but I think it makes it, I really, what you're saying, I really resonate with because I hadn't.

43:53

taken the time to go that deep until I knew the persona we were selling to. And then it became natural and was like, oh, of course I should be learning these things and doing these things and helping. But.  you can find what really matters.  Right. And that is, again, all the discussion that we've had, how you stand out, how do you break through the noise?  How do you showcase your organization over the others? It's because you truly know that ICP.

44:23

The other thing, just in terms of like the basics, and you brought up MQLs, which it's like the necessary evil in some ways, but  in terms of elevating ourselves as marketers, and maybe this is controversial, I don't know, but I always try and focus on the meeting as the main KPI. Like if I can't get people to a sales meeting, then something's wrong. Either they weren't totally qualified or sales didn't view them as qualified or.

44:50

Whatever it may be. And frankly, of course we should be looking at things as closed one opportunities and revenue and stuff, but there's so much between a meeting to close that we don't have control over.  Um, and we can nurture and we can enable that to happen, but  I,  I would just challenge people to think about how do we get people to the meeting and whether or not you oversee the BDR function, they are an extension. They are a hybrid that brings us together. And so how can we make sure that we're driving in.

45:20

quality and really like a business metric that matters in my opinion. So I love that. And it's interesting because I think sometimes, yeah, that MQL incorporates the meeting and not the meeting, but  you are right. Looking at the conversions, even from meetings to moving down the funnel to close one is way higher than sometimes the MQL,  but there's not necessarily always a definition  in the general marketing.

45:49

metrics  about the meeting held. I mean, I think we talk about it, especially in the BDR and the sales teams,  but not necessarily the marketing. But I really love focusing on that because when you look at that conversion rate,  is usually, depending on the company that you're working with,  way higher once you get that person on the phone and you can explain the value of the business. And usually that converts much higher. So figuring out, yeah, how do you calculate that meeting held  as your

46:19

your standard as like the first almost point of entry. Yeah. I mean, I  just was doing an assessment in an organization two weeks ago and I was talking to the director of demand gen and I said, well, talk to me about the performance. What are we seeing talking about volume, talk to me about quality.  And he said, well, 80 % of our leads make it to an MQL. So we are crushing it. I was like, well, how many of those make it to a meeting?  And he didn't know the answer.  And that's alarming because when I talked to sales, they said, well,

46:39 — Pipeline Generation Metrics: Why Meetings Matter More Than Vanity KPIs

all the MQLs, first of all, we don't even know what an MQL is. So they didn't know, right? They weren't a part of the definition, but they said, second of all, it's from the daycare down the street. It's not from our target enterprise account. So, you know, again, there's, this like natural, if we, as marketers really challenged ourselves to figuring out how do we get people to the meeting, I think we would just be better marketers too. yeah. No, it's great advice. Yeah.

47:17

And then the other thing I was just going to say  is when we were talking about the ICP,  sometimes agreed it is like so critical and so many organizations don't have it. And what I have found in terms of helping the organization understand the importance is more so to talk about the outcome of an ICP. And what I mean by that is the target account list. The target account list is the outcome of an ICP.

47:43

And most people understand the value of needing a really strong target account list, but they don't necessarily understand the value of seeing like this pretty PowerPoint that has images of. oh I always try to think about like, how will,  like when we talk about buyer personas and we talk about ICP and messaging and all these things that sometimes live and die on PowerPoint decks, like  really think about what is, how is that information going to get activated?

48:00 — Leadership Lessons for Marketing Leaders: Transparency, Coaching, and Team Growth

in a way that  executives understand and buy into. Let's focus on the outcomes and the activation and then do the work that we know we need to do to get there. But the amount of people who tell me, oh, we don't have time to focus on ICP or buyer personas, or we don't have time to focus on, and they're, I mean, they're right in a sense in that the PowerPoints just live and die and they never get activated. So why would we spend the time to do it? Right. So. Yeah, no.

48:39

It's the basic. even if it's a list and not a pretty document, but an actual goal to understand these are the companies, these are the businesses, this is who we're going after. That to me means your sales team and your marketing team  are working from the same  page and that they're not interpreting things differently. And it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't have to be  pretty branded in a Google  document. just has to be,  this is who. m

49:08

we're trying to engage with our business. And yeah, that's the basics. You have to have that to be able to actually grow your company. Well, thank you so much for this conversation today. This was so much fun. I've had a blast. Thank you. This is so much fun. These are things that I've been thinking about for so long. And I'm so happy that you are able to talk through them with me. Your experience, think, yeah, just really, really helpful.

49:37

I think they're very on point with what's happening in the market today. So appreciate all your insights. Thank you. Anytime. Well, if people want to connect with you, have a mentorship, a peer-to-peer working session, whatever it may be, how can they obviously on LinkedIn, I imagine? Yes, connect with me on LinkedIn, Bryna Dillman. I would be more than happy to connect and chat, meet up.

50:05

and talk marketing all day  long. Amazing.  All right. Well, I'll talk to you soon. Thanks so you so much, Neldi. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of Growth Activated.  I hope this conversation sparked new ideas,  challenged your thinking, and gave you practical tools to help elevate your impact as a marketing leader. If it did, I would love for you to pass it along to a friend or a colleague in B2B marketing.

50:33

The more we grow together, the more we raise the bar for what marketing leadership can look like.  And as always, in the meantime, keep activating growth for yourself and your company.  See you next time.