The Art of Marketing

Shownotes

This episode of Sunny Side Up highlights not only a huge marketing success story (a 50% increase in demand generation in under three years!) but also the step-by-step strategy our guests used to get there. Alberto Cantor, senior director of demand generation & corporate marketing at ArisGlobal, has taken the company’s historically sales/product-led culture from virtually no marketing function to a sophisticated, multi-pronged program. The B2B SaaS company, which is based in the life sciences sector, has enjoyed organic, sustained growth as well as branding awareness and improved user acquisition and engagement. Alberto has grown his team 6x over in his brief tenure and acquired buy-in among the top executive ranks. How has he done it? This conversation reveals his process – from the initial campaign to secure buy-in with metrics and demonstrated results to reinventing marketing basics (such as email and website content) to the massive overhaul of a legacy CRM system that – once cleaned up – started to yield amazing results. Alberto shares tips and tricks in this methodical look at the anatomy of a marketing department from conception to robust maturity!

About the Guest

Alberto is the Senior Director of Corporate Marketing and Demand Generation at ArisGlobal, a B2B SaaS company serving the life science industry. During his time at ArisGlobal, Alberto has built and scaled the demand generation functions and the team from the ground up, significantly contributing to the company’s financial success and growth. He also leads branding, brand marketing, and communications. A marketer for 10+ years, he’s worked at several high-growth SaaS companies holding different roles, mostly focused on demand generation in the health-tech / life sciences industries.

Contact Alberto Cantor

Key Takeaways

• It’s not all that rare to find rudimentary marketing functions, especially at start-ups and sales-driven organizations. Alberto has seen it three times over the course of his career.
• The first initiatives Alberto launched with an eye toward corporate buy-in.
• The marketing team’s exponential growth.
• Alberto enumerates the tools and processes he deployed in his strategic plan to integrate a robust marketing function into ArisGlobal’s product-led environment.
• What it looks like to take on (and clean up) a legacy CRM system with 70,000 entries.

Quote

“Marketing is a great function to have. It’s your partner and ally in many ways. It’s also a team that can drive forward significant changes that will (positively) impact (sales) teams.”

Episode Highlights

What changes and initiatives did you use to integrate marketing?

Initially, one of the biggest challenges was enlisting support from other teams, which he did through persuasion. It was important to drive home the message that marketing can positively impact the bottom line by generating revenue and leads, recognition, and improved employee onboarding. They got busy segmenting emails, rewriting and relaunching email streams with new content, and proving value right out of the gate. With sales quickly becoming allies, moved to revamp messaging and lead management followed by an update of the website (including making non-functional contact forms highly functional). The results spoke for themselves, and marketing soon flourished! In under three years, inbound leads now account for 50% of the pipeline. The focus is expanding to encompass branding, reputational positioning, communications, talent marketing, and PR.

Can you share the tools and processes you used to make this transformation happen?

1. When you’re selling marketing to an unfamiliar audience, it’s important to demonstrate value-add right out of the gate. Alberto was careful to map expenditures and resources to results. He spelled out bottom-line impacts and demonstrated success. “Hard metrics are key,” he says, “Whenever you’re starting any new function or team, it might be obvious, but you need to be tactical and show quick wins.” That gets you more executive buy-in and budget.
2. Acquire an internal champion who is high enough in the organization to defend marketing and drive its adoption throughout the enterprise. It can be challenging in sales/product-led environments, but you can find executives and prove value.
3. We are a big advocate for WordPress, which he believes is the platform that best serves marketing purposes. ArisGlobal used a template that made web editing accessible for marketing/non-technical team members. They added new elements like a chatbot (which expanded to incorporate live SDR interactions to qualify interested parties). It’s a basic tool that’s not deployed all that common outside of the Bay Area and can make significant sales inroads.

What did your CRM revamp look like step by step?

Phase I: Data. ArisGlobal had a badly outdated CRM system that included 70,000 contacts, which is a LOT in the life sciences sector. The great majority were duplicative, misdated, or otherwise flawed. Cleaning up all that data was labor-intensive, but increased hit rates and enriched lists paid off. This laid the groundwork for what was to come.

Phase II: Scaling. Alberto hired marketing pros to lead the way and take the whole operation up a notch. They adopted third-party software tools that have allowed sales and marketing teams to do a lot more, a lot more effectively. Alberto believes in handing the reins to experts who know how to identify and leverage the best, most reliable tools.

Recommended Reading/Resources

• Alberto is passionate about branding, product development, and social responsibility – all of which are the gold standard at Patagonia. The philosophy is spelled out by Founder Yvon Chouinard in his book: “Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman.”