The CMO’s Playbook: Balancing Strategy, Execution & Category Creation

Mike: And that’s really what this kind of up and coming marketer should be is like, figure out what questions you need to ask and who you need to ask and don’t be afraid to have a bit of vulnerability in your knowledge because nobody’s expected to know everything.

Intro: Welcome to Demand Bites, the podcast where B2B demand generation leaders find the strategies they need to grow.

I’m your host, Ross Howard, Director of Insights at Inbox Insight. And in just 15 minutes, my guests and I will uncover what’s broken in the B2B buyer journey and provide real-world strategies you can put to work right away. So whether you’re looking for an innovative demand generation technique or expert advice on accelerating sales, this podcast gives you the tools you need to succeed.

Ready to identify, educate, and convert your ideal customer profile? Or at least learn how other people are doing it? Let’s dive in.

Ross: Hello everyone, and welcome to the episode. I have with me today Mike Hicks, CMO of AppSpace. Welcome to the show, Mike.

Mike: Hey, thank you. Great to be here.

Ross: Should we maybe talk a little bit about your professional journey and what brought you to AppSpace? I know you were at BlackBerry for a time. What’s your marketing story been like?

Mike: Yeah sure. So I started at a B2B marketing agency and I think it taught me a lot of really cool things, particularly around quality customer service.

And that I think has helped me a lot. And I often look for agency experience when we’re hiring, regardless of the role because there’s something about that dynamic of multiple competing priorities, timelines that have to be met and I think a lot of times people that haven’t grown up or that maybe grew up in their career on the client side, they don’t understand the importance of timelines as much as the people that have agency experience, so absolutely loved the time that I spent there. I learned a lot. I learned a lot about creative process and branding from multiple perspectives, and just having access to those types of creative people was really powerful for me.

Then spent a bunch of time at Blackberry – almost kind of grew up in my career there. And it was a really interesting time because we were almost like this mini company inside of this massive global organization. And there was a lot of freedom, but also then a lot of restrictions because we weren’t the major revenue driver for that business at that time.

But what’s interesting is now enterprise software is what BlackBerry is, but we had the backing of a major global brand, which gave us a lot of leverage when negotiating with vendors, which it was another key skill I think I learned there is around, really how to drop what you need out of a vendor relationship.

And then from there went on and started leading marketing at a smaller scale up organization – spent a bunch of years there and moved on to another company called Beezy. And Beezy was actually acquired by AppSpace, which is now where I am and leading that marketing function and just loving every day of it.

Ross: So tell me a little bit more about what you’re trying to achieve at AppSpace and what type of team you have around you.

Mike: So AppSpace, we are a workplace experience platform. And really what that means is we combine the digital workplace – so think things like intranet, internal news, and employee communications – with the physical, kind of hybrid office. So space booking, desks, hot desking, visitor management, all those kind of things that happen inside an office.

And because it’s such a new concept, we spent a lot of time with analysts, a lot of thought leadership around how do we now define this idea of what a workplace experience platform is and get people to buy in because oftentimes the buyers for individual products, they’re very siloed and they’re across different departments.

And we’re trying to level up the conversation to say, okay, you need to be thinking broader because there’s a way to integrate all of these things together, but it takes a strategic mind. So we spent a lot of time on that and then plus just standardized stuff on what events do we need to be at? What’s our digital marketing strategy going to be at?

We’re bringing on now a dedicated social media specialist because I think social is a channel that we’ve kind of underutilized. So really excited about ramping up that as a channel. And then there’s all just the typical stuff around are we generating enough leads from the right channels?

What’s our cost per lead? What does the CFO need to know? What does the CRO need to know? How do I help sales accelerate deals and pipeline based on what’s already in play. So all the typical stuff that you would expect, but really I think the big thing for us is category creation and changing the idea of what do people need to be thinking about when it comes to solving the types of business challenges that we solve.

Ross: When you try and navigate that, when you are balancing long term education and thought leadership, and some of those more short term concerns – lead routing, pipeline – where are we going to be in terms of the places where our audience are? How do you balance that as a CMO downwards to decide where you need to move your focus?

Mike: Yeah one of the things that I think is important for listeners to take away as I often coach the team. Let’s not have FOMO about what our competitors are doing. So often you get caught in this chasing of, oh, they’re going to be over there, we better do that, be there. Or they’re doing that, we better do that too.

And I think to answer your question on how do I balance it, I really look at, given the budget that we have, are we generating enough top, middle, bottom to meet the current quarterly KPIs, as well as set us up in the future. So we’ve got to look at things like what’s our typical sales cycle deal length from lead to close and how much pipeline do we have at any kind of current stage now?

And where do we have the biggest need moving forward? Because a lot of marketers, I think, get caught in this kind of like demo, demo, demo, call to action cycle and maybe ignore top of funnel and some of that early brand awareness stuff, and tell us too late. And then they realize, oh, we burned through all our bottom funnel stuff.

We have nothing at the top to nurture. So that balance is going to be different, I think, for every organization. And I also think another key consideration is looking at the makeup of your team and where is their expertise? Cause there’s not going to be a team out there that has expertise at the top level brand awareness, thought leadership, lead gen way up there, and versus middle kind of stuff, versus bottom.

So you’re creating friction if you’re trying to force the team to do things that are unnatural against their skill. So as unfortunate as that is, you got to look to say, where’s my quickest path to lead gen, and then look at, is that lead gen costing me the right amount of money based on where it sits in terms of top, medium, bottom, and am I generally generating enough at any one of those stages to meet the short term and the long term lead conversion goals?

Ross: That’s really cool. That’s an awesome answer. You mentioned earlier bringing in the right talent if you do need to be somewhere where you maybe don’t have those skills at the moment.

If you were to give advice, like you say you’re coaching the team, if you were to give advice to somebody who’s a demand gen director, who has some skill areas around, lead generation and market education, but wants to be in the seat you’re in, what would be your top priority for that person to invest in?

Mike: So I think they got to think about this concept of strategic and operational. Nobody is equally both. And even also on the side of a demand gen manager or director trying to make a level up is they got to think about what kind of marketing leader are they. Do they slant more towards the brand side, or they slant more towards the analytic side, and really align that to what their business needs.

So back to the strategic versus the operational is, are they really good at executing plans, and according to timeline and budget and coordinated activities of multiple people, or are they better at big picture thinking, and then need to surround themselves with some of those operational excellence people.

And that’s a hard thing for people to get their head around because everyone thinks, oh, I want to do it all. But really you’re going to lean more towards one or the other and make sure that you shore up your weak side with the right type of people around you. Same thing with the brand versus the analytical side is, it doesn’t matter which way you lean.

Like I lean more towards the analytical side, but through my agency experience and with the people on the team, I can lean on them to help on the brand and the creative side, so I’m not worried about it.

And I think the other thing too is that young kind of marketer needs to get out of this idea of they need to have all the answers right away. Ask a bunch of questions and don’t be afraid to show some vulnerability in your understanding. That’s something that the more I get in my career, the more I’m just like, it’s not a sign of weakness that you don’t know.

And I think for me, social media is probably the biggest one is where I have the least amount of experience, least amount of knowledge. And now I’m bringing in an expert to say, okay, I need you to drive this channel for us. And I can ask a bunch of questions and I think I’m good at asking questions.

And that’s really what this kind of up and coming marketer should be is like, figure out what questions you need to ask and who you need to ask and don’t be afraid to have a bit of vulnerability in your knowledge because nobody’s expected to know everything.

Ross: That’s awesome. That’s really practical.

When you’re taking a top down perspective as CMO, how do you decide what to outsource for in specific channels versus what you want to keep close, and how do you manage that process of having to use people who aren’t in the org?

Mike: Yeah I think there’s a bunch of things that happens there. One is, how strategically important is that function to the business?

And if the answer is it’s highly strategic, you gotta ask the question, well why is that not currently a role? And there could be a bunch of reasons for that. But if you have a short term, immediate need and you don’t have the role, then outsourcing is the easiest way to go. And then you got to start looking at the cost of how much is that costing me on an annual and monthly basis?

And is that cost starting to get more than 1.5x the cost of the headcount? And if it is, like if you’re up in the like, this is 2 to 3x my monthly cost if I had the role, then maybe you got to say, I need to build a business case to hire this role.

I think there’s some other things around there too of like, is this the type of function that requires multiple people at that agency to do, or is it kind of like a highly effective single person could do it? So a perfect example is, take PR. You may outsource your PR because even though they’re giving you maybe a few hours a week of time, and it’s multiple people that are quickly able to do a whole bunch of things.

And you might say, okay, I will make that trade off on letting them do that function a couple times a week because I don’t have that requirement as a full time thing in my business today, so that could be fine. And it might break your 1.5x cost rule, but maybe that’s okay because of the expertise and specialization of it.

Another one could be like event management. You might outsource that because you don’t do very many events and you can’t justify the head count. One thing I think you got to look at though is, is the amount of money that I’m going to spend with that vendor – where does that put me in their priority list?

Because oftentimes I think, oh, as a percentage of my budget I’m spending a lot of money with this vendor, but they might say, well, you are at the bottom of the rung, which means now you’re getting most likely the most junior account management employees servicing your account. And maybe if it came down to a timeline decision between you and someone else, you’re going to lose that battle, in which case now your timelines are at risk because they can’t deliver.

So you got to really look at that too, because you don’t necessarily want to be the top client. Because it’s kind of like buying the most expensive house in the street. But you also don’t want to be at the bottom because now you’re at the mercy of every other client that sits above you.

So figuring out where you want to land with that particular function and that vendor I think is important. The other thing is how long is it going to take that vendor to ramp up in their understanding of your business and your industry. And this is one where, take something like content – a lot of people have to outsource content.

And if you invest in that relationship then it can pay off incredibly, right. For the first several months you’re going to basically have to rewrite everything they do. But if they’re smart and you’ve got a good team and and they’re prioritizing your work, they’re going to learn and they’ll become incredibly effective for you to the point that you may say, okay, long term content outsource is the way to go.

But you got to be willing to put in that time. If you’re not, if you’re just looking for, oh, we have an immediate need for something, chances are you’re going to be disappointed because it won’t understand your business or your industry enough to deliver something effective the first time.

So I think those are a bunch of the things to look at. And also too, it takes time to manage a vendor and do you even have somebody in-house that’s equipped to manage them effectively and hold them accountable and brief them and all those types of things too. So it’s not necessarily a black and white thing and I think you’ll kind of go through phases of outsource versus in source.

Two years ago we brought in digital marketing, and it’s been the best decision that we’ve ever made. And we still outsource today our SEO. We have outsourced some content but we are ramping up internal hires now for our content. Like I said, we’re bringing in a social media specialist to dedicate it just to that, which is previous years we’ve outsourced that.

So we’re kind of going through this change of different things are becoming more important. So we’re willing to bring it in so we have dedicated peoples addressing those priorities.

Ross: I’ve just seen the time. I’ve had a blast talking to you, Mike. But I feel like I should let you go back to your day.

Thanks so much. I’ve really enjoyed this. Where can people find out more about you, Mike?

Mike: About me? Look me up on LinkedIn, Mike Hicks, CMO of AppSpace. And then for AppSpace, if you’re dealing with an intranet that is lacking engagement or you’re struggling with getting news out to employees, particularly frontline workers, if you’re working through your hybrid and return office strategy and they’re struggling with hot desking and conference room booking and visitor management, check out AppSpace. That’s what we do – workplace experience platform AppSpace.com and, we’d love to chat.

Outro: Fantastic. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Mike: Great. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you.

Ross: And that wraps up today’s episode of Demand Bites. Thanks for listening. I hope the insights provided today are able to help you power up your own demand generation efforts. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard, make sure to hit subscribe so you’re always up to date with the latest strategies.

If you’re looking for more insight, stay connected with Inbox Insight on LinkedIn and join a network of marketing leaders driving the future of demand gen.

Stay ahead with expert demand gen strategies

Subscribe now to get exclusive access to episodes packed with real-world strategies to drive ROI and build a high-performing pipeline:

• YouTube
• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts
• LinkedIn