Newsletter Archive

Newsletter archive

EXIT FIVE

The Five: Here’s The Five

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

Here’s the Exit Five weekly newsletter

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

Will you read me on a Monday?

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

Commit

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

My friend 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

Fix this

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

Videos

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
EXIT FIVE

The ROI of social media (for real)

The Real ROI of Social Media. A few weeks ago I wrote a viral LinkedIn post (viral for me at least; had 1M+ views in a day). Last week I used the content from that LinkedIn post in my newsletter list of 10k subscribers — I got more replies back than in a single week maybe ever, saying "great post" or "I learned something from this" or "best email yet!" — and not a single person write "dude, you just posted this on LinkedIn…." I've also been able to read the comments on that post from LinkedIn + email responses to judge what parts of that content people reacted to (or were confused by) and tweak it and use it for an upcoming presentation at an event I am speaking at. Then this week, I used the content from that email + post to deliver a talk in front of ~300 marketers at CXL Live in Austin.

Oct 17, 2022 · 6 min read
EXIT FIVE

No one cares

Please remember this if you work in marketing: No one is paying attention to your company. At least that's the mindset I like to have when doing marketing. You must assume that your prospect/customer is not paying attention. Why would they be?

Oct 5, 2022 · 2 min read
EXIT FIVE

Steal this LinkedIn move I use

Here's a proactive LinkedIn move to steal. It's hard to build an audience with a cold start, and simply posting content won't just magically draw in an audience. One thing I've done in the past and recommend to those I know now: be proactive with connections. You can have 30,000 connections before LinkedIn turns it over to "followers" — and a new connection is essentially someone opting in to see your content. So now the more you publish, the more you increase the chances of those people seeing it.

Sep 29, 2022 · 3 min read
EXIT FIVE

Win/loss analysis

Should you be using Win/Loss analysis? If you are like me you are looking for anything you can add to your toolkit to help the company close more deals and generate more revenue. But most of the "growth" advice often centers around more: more top of the funnel, more volume, more conversion, more optimizations, more ads, etc. Instead, you could be winning more deals (and influencing your product org) by truly understand why people are *not* buying. Enter Win/Loss analysis. Marketers that know how to do win/loss analysis can create a competitive advantage because they are getting deep buyer insights and delivering their message more effectively both internally and externally. As a result, they can create marketing and product strategies based on what their buyers care about most.

Sep 20, 2022 · 4 min read
EXIT FIVE

What’s the ROI of a podcast?

What's the ROI of a podcast? One of the most common questions I see around B2B startups as it relates to starting (or not starting) a podcast is — of course — well what's the expected ROI of that podcast. But that's where everything starts to go haywire IMO. What makes a podcast great is that it's often *not* a sales channel. It's a way to have conversations, share your POV, talk to dream customers, record it all and repurpose that content across your website, blog, social. So if you go into creating a podcast for business thinking about "well what's the dollar ROI of this going to be" it's going to be an uphill battle. You also need TIME. A podcast will not be an overnight success, so you're going to nee to commit to 6-12 months of doing it consistently before anything real happens.

Sep 13, 2022 · 3 min read
EXIT FIVE

Budget cuts

Marketing in a recession. Marketing in a recession —> we're all making cuts and changes right now. I've seen it in my business personally, with companies I'm working with, and even how I am making some decisions. But as it relates to the marketing strategy moving forward, if the only thing changing about your marketing strategy right now is cutting back on paid, you have more creative thinking to do.

Sep 6, 2022 · 3 min read
EXIT FIVE

Nurture nurture nurture

The solution is never more lead nurturing. I don’t mean that example specially, but here’s what I’m trying to articulate – the marketing team often defaults to the smallest possible solutions…

Sep 1, 2022 · 3 min read
EXIT FIVE

Do you need your boss too much?

Stop relying on your boss. The less you can rely on your boss, the better.

Aug 25, 2022 · 3 min read
EXIT FIVE

Community for B2B

Community Is The #1 B2B Marketing Trend Community is the most important trend to understand and try to harness for your business today. Smart marketing teams (and the executives at those companies) understand the value of building an audience of their dream customers. Community can come in different forms and channels. But for me it’s about building relationships through content with your dream customers — that has nothing to do with selling your product, but everything to do with helping them achieve their goals personally / professionally.

Aug 15, 2022 · 5 min read
EXIT FIVE

LinkedIn vs. PR

LinkedIn vs. PR. You could pay a PR agency $10k/month to write and place articles in publications that few of your actual customers will ever read. Or — through only text + images — you could build a following for your CEO/Founder/Company Page on LinkedIn and reach customers directly. Maybe you’ll get the PR bump of you land a massive feature in a Tier 1 publication, but that is pipe dreams for most B2B software companies today. So instead you get the random blogs so the PR team can feel good about “placing” something. Forget that approach.

Aug 10, 2022 · 4 min read