Newsletter Archive

Newsletter archive

EXIT FIVE
Newsletter #57

Great Marketing Leaders Need More Than Tactics

Exit Five Newsletter 57

Aug 2, 2023 · 5 min read
EXIT FIVE
Newsletter #56

LinkedIn Ads, Organic Audiences, and B2B Growth

Exit Five Newsletter 56

Jul 26, 2023 · 6 min read
EXIT FIVE

Lead Gen, Gated Content, and Why Ebooks Still Work

Are leads dead in B2B?

Jul 11, 2023 · 1 min read
EXIT FIVE

Do Webinars Stink? How to Rethink Your Webinar Strategy

Do Webinars Stink? What about Live Sessions? Just call it a Live Session vs. a Webinar and boom, you're good right?

Jun 28, 2023 · 3 min read
EXIT FIVE

You need better goals + strategy

After spending 10 years working in B2B SaaS in marketing roles, as a CMO, and later advising startups in the space, hosting the Exit Five podcast and talking to hundreds of marketers through our community I know one thing almost for certain:

Jun 22, 2023 · 5 min read
EXIT FIVE

Was there a playbook for building Exit Five?

Going from CMO to Building Exit Five – Is There A Playbook? "Hey Dave how did you build a successful community? Any tips?" Once you reach a certain level of success with a product you will get messages from people who want to do something similar, and they want the five minute playbook on how you did it.

Jun 15, 2023 · 3 min read
EXIT FIVE

Hang in there…

First, just a message from me. HANG IN THERE!

Jun 6, 2023 · 5 min read
EXIT FIVE

Community Launch, CMO Lessons, and B2B Events Strategy

It’s time to plan your fall event schedule – make sure INBOUND is at the top of your list.

Jun 1, 2023 · 5 min read
EXIT FIVE

The Five: B2B Marketing Design, Positioning, and CMO Insights

If you are looking for on-demand design help here's a resource for you….

May 11, 2023 · 5 min read
EXIT FIVE

B2B Content Strategy and Marketing Career Lessons

Content marketing is a widely accepted part of B2B marketing today. But it's also one of the biggest wastes of money and time sucks for the team…

May 4, 2023 · 7 min read
EXIT FIVE

The Five: B2B Marketing During Layoffs, Budget Cuts, and Slow Sales

Layoffs, budget cuts, slower sales cycles, and a lack of urgency to buy your product right now.

Apr 19, 2023 · 9 min read
EXIT FIVE

The Five: Doing More With Less

Layoffs, budget cuts, slower sales cycles — marketers are being asked to do more with less. How three marketing leaders are adapting their strategy to drive sustainable growth when conditions aren't in your favor.

Apr 13, 2023 · 6 min read
EXIT FIVE

The Five: Reporting to the CEO

Reporting directly to the CEO for the first time? Five hard-won lessons from the Exit Five community on managing up — from owning the plan to bringing solutions instead of problems.

Apr 6, 2023 · 4 min read
EXIT FIVE

Here’s the Exit Five weekly newsletter

Don't let a previous investment get you stuck from making progress today. If you're in a hole, stop digging. Almost every mistake I've made in business now and during my time as a marketing leader comes back to me being too attached to a sunk cost. The sunk cost fallacy: "the human tendency to stick with endeavors in which we've already invested time, money, or other resources even when changing course would be the more logical choice."

Mar 10, 2023 · 6 min read
EXIT FIVE

B2B Community Building, Lead Management, and LinkedIn Growth Tips

You can automate the entire lead management process and move potential customers across all of your key systems, assign leads to sales reps for timely and relevant outreach, and then scale the entire program so you can put your funnel on autopilot so you can spend more time on strategy and creative work.

Feb 22, 2023 · 7 min read
EXIT FIVE

How’s your public speaking?

If you want to grow your career as a marketing leader, you must master public speaking. – Dave's Law #33 OK I just made that up looking for a hook for this week's newsletter, but this is something that I have a strong belief in. You must be a top notch communicator if you want to be the CMO or marketing leader. And this is true for all formats. You need to be strong in-person, over Zoom, on video, and in writing.

Feb 15, 2023 · 6 min read
EXIT FIVE

Don’t build a marketing team

Marketing Team vs. Media Company There's this concept I've been sharing for a few years now. I say it in different ways at times, but this is pretty much it: don't build a marketing team, build a media company for your niche. It's probably not an original thought. I'm sure GaryV has said it at some point. But I am sharing it because I've lived it. This is what we did in marketing at Drift (B2B). This is what we did in marketing at Privy (B2B). And this is basically what I am doing now with the Exit Five podcast + community. Liam Curley created this little graphic and it got a bunch of favorites so was top of my mind to share in this week's email. Screen Shot 2022-07-12 at 10.31.54 AM Here's what I mean when I talk about building a media company not a marketing team… Build an audience of your dream customers not by not thinking like a *marketing team* but by thinking like a *media company* If you're in B2B and your ideal customer is in sales, finance, HR, marketing, ops, recruiting, legal — how can you become the number one resource and trusted advisor to them? How can you help them do a better job, reduce stress, save time, make life easier, help their company grow faster, get promoted, etc. If you didn't work at a company that had internal goals and metrics to hit but you had to build an audience of your ideal customers in that niche, what would you do? You'd focus on content that is educational + entertaining with the goal of getting those people to your website, on your email list, following you on social media, listening to your podcast. That's what I mean when I use this line about "don't build a marketing team build a media company for your niche." Product-Led Growth –> New podcast We've been cranking on the Exit Five podcast over the last few weeks. Have you been listening? Reply and let me know / let me know what you want to hear about. This week my guests: Breezy Beaumont (Head of Growth at Correlated) and Andrew Capland (Founder, Delivering Value) and our focus was product-led growth as it relates to B2B marketing. Plus there's a new conversation with Guild Education SVP of Marketing Sara-Beth Anders about her path and lessons from her prior role as Director of Marketing at LinkedIn and Director of Product & Customer Marketing at Greenhouse. Get the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and everywhere else you listen. Screen Shot 2022-07-12 at 10.32.50 AM Are you hiring marketers? Reach thousands of B2B marketers every month through the Exit Five job board. It's 100% free for any company to post a B2B marketing role, plus you can promote jobs to reach more people over 30 days. There are currently 52 open roles and the job board and I get emails like this a few times a month. Screen Shot 2022-07-12 at 10.53.14 AM Screen Shot 2022-07-12 at 10.36.11 AM why r u still reading?? 🙂 hey. if you're still reading this, send me a reply back. let me know what you do for work + what you're up to. or just say hey. PS. join the Exit Five community if you haven't already we have a private community of 3,000+ B2B marketing pros where we talk about what we're doing, learning, vendors, advice, feedback, anonymous questions and more. you can join here.

Feb 12, 2023 · 3 min read
EXIT FIVE

LinkedIn Followers Are Not a Vanity Metric for B2B Marketers

FYI: LinkedIn followers are not a vanity metric.  People are going to say they are, which is okay. But the number of followers you have, whether we like it or not, not only matters but creates impact.  The more followers an account gets, the more people that account can reach.

Feb 6, 2023 · 5 min read
EXIT FIVE

What’s on my mind this week…

One opening thought this week: If you’re lucky enough to still have a marketing job… This will be a great 12 months to learn (or relearn) what marketing really needs to do: Make sales easier. And in then in 2024 we can get back to the Yeti's and hoodies and wine and cheeses.

Jan 25, 2023 · 7 min read
EXIT FIVE

Open for a career hack

Hey – it's me Dave. Back with the weekly Exit Five newsletter. Here's a little career hack I don't see talked about often… You can create an advantage in your marketing career by being an early adopter. The people that I've seen over the course of my career and in my network that have rose through the ranks the fastest or made an outsized impact given where they were at a particular time in their career seem to have one thing in common

Jan 18, 2023 · 4 min read
EXIT FIVE

Will AI change the game for B2B marketers?

As of this moment (January 2023) AI is the most talked about thing among businesses, entrepreneurs, and marketers. Is it hype? Is it overblown? No. Hype was Clubhouse. Hype was Web3. As Kieran Flanagan (SVP Marketing at HubSpot) recently said: "By the end of this decade, there will be two types of companies: those who've made AI part of their business, and those who've gone out of business. Act Accordingly.”

Jan 11, 2023 · 5 min read
EXIT FIVE

Why B2B Marketers Must Commit to Change in 2023

Change is hard. We are all human (at least I think, if you're reading this email but who knows there's a lot going on with AI right now). And when it comes to change, shoot – we don't like to make changes.   Heading into 2023 right now I know many marketers / marketing teams that are being asked to make dramatic changes: changes to your ideal customer, changes to who does what on the team and who reports to who, changes to what channels you're focusing on, changes to the overall company strategy.   But at this point in time you must commit. Your job will be too hard if you continue to fight the changes. It is time to disagree and commit (or hopefully agree and commit, but know that it is OK to disagree). There have been countless times in my career where I have had to make changes or the company has made changes that I did not agree with as it relates to marketing, but things will never workout unless the whole leadership team can COMMIT to these changes.

Jan 4, 2023 · 6 min read
EXIT FIVE

I am not good at presenting data

I saw a post recently about how important "how" you present your data is… And how looking at changes month over month when presenting to the leadership team, the board, etc. doesn't always tell the full story (and in some cases you end up shooting yourself in the foot and opening up more hard questions about growth when dammit, you're actually growing over time.. it just doesn't scream at you on the chart) I grouped Exit Five podcast downloads by month vs by quarter. Because last night I was looking at that the top bar chart and being like "man, I wish this thing was growing faster" — and then I remembered. Wait. Group it by quarter – let's see if it looks different. Not only does it look different, but I FEEL DIFFERENT about it. I'm now saying, heck yeah — this podcast is growing! Let's keep growing it!

Dec 19, 2022 · 3 min read
EXIT FIVE

Running, Sports Radio, and Life Outside B2B Marketing With Tim

I was in the mood to do something completely different this week, so I had my friend from high school Tim on the Exit Five podcast. I'm exploring a new sub-segment of the podcast called "Outside of Work" where I talk to people about other things. Tim is one of my best friends from back in the day, and we talk about his love for running, my love for golf, how those hobbies have given us a bunch of joy and purpose outside of work – and there's a lot of unfiltered Dave G not talking about marketing on there that I hope you enjoy listening to.

Dec 14, 2022 · 2 min read
EXIT FIVE

Your Positioning Problem Is Killing Your B2B Pipeline

When it comes to driving revenue we obsess over tactics. When so often the root cause is actually positioning, which is a company problem not just a marketing problem. When sales and marketing efforts are stuck or slowing down, it's rarely because you need to unlock a new channel, or because you are not using the latest martech tool. It is most often a positioning problem. But it is much easier to toss the blame on sales + marketing efforts and ask those teams to do more – because positioning is a whole company issue.

Dec 7, 2022 · 5 min read
EXIT FIVE

Should you create a category?

Should you create a category? There was a question a few weeks ago in the Exit Five community from Calvin about category creation and I thought it would be a good one to feature in this week's newsletter: Question   Category creation seems to be all the rage in B2B marketing these days. I see marketers talk about it on LinkedIn every day." "Don't compete, just make your own category!" they say. If only it were that easy. It takes so much more than writing blogs about it and pitching Forrester analysts. Let's have an honest discussion. How come everyone fancies themselves a category creator, but yet there are only so few B2B categories that are "official"? It's like being an NBA player. Only 0,5% ever make it.

Nov 29, 2022 · 5 min read
EXIT FIVE

Short-Form Video Is Coming for B2B Marketing

Do you have a short form video strategy? Short form video is eating the world. Everyone is talking about it in our personal lives or as B2C brands, but short form video is going to eat B2B marketing too. The people you're selling to are still people. The trick will be figuring out which content to make. Similar to Youtube, you can't just re-purpose videos or take podcast clips and hope to grow. You need to create dedicated content for those platforms — or at least have the "this is for a 1 minute video" mindset.   Short form video is not just about doing TikTok dances.   With the rise of YouTube Shorts, short form video is going to eat Google Search because it is the PERFECT customer experience.

Nov 16, 2022 · 4 min read
EXIT FIVE

Buckle up, marketers

Marketing has to be the revenue department. Buckle up. If you're in SaaS you've seen / felt what's happening with the economy first-hand. Either you've had to make layoffs, your budget has been cut, or your company is doing OK but buying is slowing down. I'm not writing this to send you into a panic. There are many great companies out there that will continue to grow. And many more that will survive and then thrive after having been forced to make changes. But there's no better time to get back to basics with marketing. Only the marketing programs that can prove revenue will survive right now.

Nov 8, 2022 · 4 min read
EXIT FIVE

What should you do the first 30 days?

What should you do the first 30 days? There was a question this week in the Exit Five community about starting a new job as Head of Marketing and what to focus on in the first 30 days.   Hi: I am starting a new Head of Marketing role at a HealthTech this week. I have a team of 18 who have been without a leader for around 6 months – and they are open and excited about me joining. I report into the CEO and sit on the leadership team.   Any advice on how to make a big impact in my first 30 days short of just jumping in and executing/fire fighting which I am used to doing in previous marketing leadership roles with much smaller teams?

Nov 1, 2022 · 4 min read
EXIT FIVE

What I wish I knew as first-time CMO

16 Lessons I Wish I Knew… I went from Marketing Manager to CMO in 4 years. And damn did I make a bunch of mistakes along the way. I didn't realize how different the role of "good marketer" was from the role of "good marketing leader." After some time now away from a marketing leadership role (I'm retired from being a marketing leader, don't worry) I've had some time to think back on the things I wish I knew then.

Oct 17, 2022 · 10 min read