A technical CMO believes in the power of dissent

With all the information necessary to make educated purchase decisions right at their fingertips, the modern marketer has become sophisticated and savvy. Marketers need to acknowledge this as part of their strategy if they want to resonate with their customers and set themselves apart from their competitors. Operating in an environment of ultra-informed buyers, Beckley urges against throwing a ‘marketing spin’ on a product and instead wants his employees to simply speak to the merits of the solution. Beckley’s advantage as a technical CMO is that he can clearly explain the benefits of the Appian software and demonstrate to prospects how it fits into their business model.

Beckley advocates for a culture of dissent at work to navigate the frequent shifts in the technology industry and make appropriate business decisions. Encouraging your team to question and sometimes push back against new technology will enable them to empathize with consumers who do the same. With this adopted attitude, marketers and technology teams will be better equipped to steer their buying and selling efforts in the right direction, while prioritizing authentic product benefits. Despite the role of a marketing team, in part, being to build hype around a product, it is equally critical to be credible to customers by guiding them along their journey and assisting them in adopting new technology at the right time. By being honest about the state of the technology and straightforward about where a product will be best utilized, you can build invaluable trust and credibility with your customers.

Customer advocacy

Having successful customers explain how a product solves their business problems sets a company apart, especially in a saturated industry such as B2B technology. Formulating a customer advocacy program helps businesses break free from marketing echo-chambers and adopt a more customer-centric approach. When customers explain the value they see in an innovative product, they increase brand awareness, exposure, and drive organic demand. Potential clients trust the honest opinions of other customers, particularly as they become increasingly informed and presented with a surplus of options.

Appian boasts an impressive number of case studies, testimonials, and customer success stories on their website. It’s no surprise that Beckley recognizes the importance of customer advocacy and its critical role in Appian’s marketing strategy. He explains that technology does not matter if it fails to demonstrate value, and prospects need to envision themselves in the customer journey. These case studies not only provide mutual benefits for both clients and the business by showcasing innovative work but also serve to reinforce the culture of trust and credibility fostered by Beckley within Appian’s go-to-market strategy.

Remaining relevant 

The key to remaining relevant in an evolving industry begins with building a powerful engine for capturing the way work happens, utilizing the complexity of the real world. Having a product that is relevant in a common way establishes a strong foundation for helping companies navigate the expected and frequent shifts in the technology industry. One of the more recent and drastic shifts, the pandemic, presented challenges to businesses with manual processes and forced them to reassess their operations in a new way—everything had to go digital. This digital transformation accelerated the established timelines that marketers previously had and highlighted the unpredictability of the industry.

Another critical aspect of staying relevant is equipping all employees with the tools to envision how work can be improved. There is often a natural skepticism towards young leaders, but by growing up alongside clients, businesses can establish themselves as credible advisors and partners while transforming core elements of their own operations. Involving more individuals, including the youngest generation, in envisioning better ways to optimize processes enables businesses to serve customers more efficiently and deliver more effective solutions to the market. Trusting the people who form your organization and being optimistic about your workforce allows you to challenge preconceived notions of how work is traditionally conducted and how it should be done.

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About Appian

Appian was founded by four individuals—Matt Calkins, Bob Kramer, Marc Wilson, and Michael Beckley—in McLean, Virginia, in 1999. This non-traditional tech startup journey has led to sustained success, leading to the company going public in 2017. Today, Appian is trusted by some of the world’s largest brands. With their Appian platform, Appian is redefining the process management and orchestration industry through innovative technology in low-code development and automation.

About Michael Beckley

Michael is a founder of Appian, serving as the company’s Chief Technology Officer and currently acting as their Chief Marketing Officer. He drives the technical vision for the company, leads Appian’s product and solutions marketing teams, and oversees customer initiatives worldwide.

About the CMO Perspective video series

The CMO Perspectives series spotlights industry-leading executives who are making a difference within the tech marketing landscape. Our host, Matt Yorke, Global Chief Revenue Officer of Foundry, delves into the latest marketing trends, providing peer insights for tech marketers.

ABM/Intent focus

Traditionally, Cisco focused on scaling rather than ABM. However, in the last year they have been transitioning into 1:few ABM models, and plan to dial up in FY23. Cisco leveraged intent data in forming their ABM approach and determined the top 100 accounts globally, regionally, and in specific “theaters” (clusters of countries) to gain insights on which accounts they need to influence in certain markets to “move that needle.”

Cisco’s strategy hinges partially on moving prospects along a matrix — focusing on high technology adopters that are relatively brand agnostic, or as Roffey defines them “transformational occasionals,” and on winning their loyalty to make them “transformational loyalists.” Through this categorization, marketing can not only target and escalate accounts that sales might otherwise overlook, but create new upsell and cross sell opportunities among buyers and existing customers that are eager to deploy new tech.

Role & influence of the technology decision-maker

In the , we learned that the average tech team includes 21 decision-makers. Cisco as a company can influence the technology decision-maker due to their incomparable scope. Therefore, it is pertinent for tools and processes to be put in place by marketing so that the Cisco sales team knows how to execute personalization at scale. With marketing using data to craft and deploy messaging aligned to various combinations of product and persona, Cisco allows the buying journey to be easier and more personal for the customers.

Measuring marketing’s influence beyond ROI

Cisco’s ‘CMO Dashboard’ allows the marketing team to articulate the value of their campaigns to other parts of the business. Roffey feels “what’s the ROI on this?” does not allow for progress made by the marketing team each month to be appreciated and understood. By sharing measurements and metrics, such as influence, average order value, time to close and significantly engaged with the sales team, Roffey looks to increase visibility into the importance of the marketing arm of Cisco beyond direct revenue attribution.

About the CMO Perspectives video series:

The CMO Perspectives series spotlights industry-leading executives that are making a difference within the tech marketing landscape. Our host, Matt Yorke, Global Chief Revenue Officer of Foundry, dives into the latest marketing trends, providing peer insight for tech marketers.

Rebuilding GoTo’s brand identity and go-to-market strategy

In February 2022, LogMeIn garnered attention when it announced a complete company overhaul with its rebrand to GoTo. Domenici, who “was brought on to bring change and clarity” to the company brand and portfolio, drove this change in a bold way in her first months onboard. Demonstrating to the CEO and board in her interview that the legacy brand and portfolio made it hard to understand what the company sold, stood for, and how they provided value, Domenici offered a marketing-led solution that would bring clarity, simplicity, and a clear value prop to the company.

During her first month in her role as CMO, Domenici sold the idea of the identity change to her board and led the rebrand to GoTo with a focus on reducing complexity. It was important to Domenici that each aspect of the transformation drive efficiency and spend as well. Much more than a name change, the almost year-long rebrand effort catalyzed a refreshed visual identity, go-to-market strategy, product portfolio, and complete digital transformation. By consolidating 13 brands, 16 websites and 18 products, the rebrand to GoTo simplified the company’s go-to-market strategy, allowing both their employees and customers to better understand the product portfolio and leverage GoTo’s offerings in a more efficient and lucrative way.

Reflecting on the rebrand & prioritizing corporate communication

In reflecting on the process and success of the rebrand, Domenici cited two related areas she sees as benefitting from heavy investment: a robust corporate comms strategy and sales enablement initiatives. She advises that guiding your own employees along the journey of a rebrand takes a lot of effort and thoughtfulness, and the more comfortable teams are with everything from the product portfolio to the brand identity to the reasons for change, the better the experience will be internally, in the market, and for customers throughout the buyer’s journey.

As a tip for those planning a transformation of any scale, Domenici says “I believe your whole company needs to be certified on your value prop—not just your sales team.”

Marketing’s role in customer experience

Domenici also knows the importance that having an intimate understanding of the overall customer experience plays in the role of the CMO. Over her career as a marketer, Domenici deliberately spent 3 years in a customer success role at Salesforce to gain first-hand experience on the end-to-end customer journey. A key takeaway from that role: the first 30-days are crucial in the buyers’ experience, and the more personalization present and deeper connections that are made will make for a more loyal customer and better business. Knowledge of the customer journey is crucial for marketing teams who proceed to manage the end-to-end lifecycle engagement.

Measuring brand health with intent

While brand health and impact can be challenging to measure, Domenici and her team are leaning into intent data to identify and understand indicators of success tied to the rebrand to GoTo. Her model looks at both quantitative and qualitative signals to learn what’s working and what’s not based on concrete datapoints. These signals, paired with first-party intent, are helping Domenici’s team craft increasingly personalized, effective messaging across marketing efforts and interactions across the customer lifecycle.

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About the CMO Perspectives Video Series:
The series spotlights industry-leading executives that are making a difference within the tech marketing landscape. Our host, Matt Yorke, Global Chief Revenue Officer of Foundry, dives into the latest marketing trends, providing peer insight for tech marketers.

Digital transformation, velocity, and value of business relationships and people are critical for partner solutions success at Google Cloud. Aimee Catalano and her team thrive on teamwork and working strategically with partners and customers to achieve fast-paced growth for Google Cloud year over year. Foundry’s Global Chief Revenue Officer, Matt Yorke, sat down with Aimee to learn more about how her partner marketing insights and strategies can help other partner marketers achieve results. 

The Importance of Global Partner Marketing in an Organization

Aimee emphasizes the crucial role the partner marketing team plays at Google Cloud in driving year over year growth for the company, likening partner marketing to “full-spectrum marketing” in its end-to-end ownership of “the go-to-market strategy and marketing plan” for each partner. This includes everything from driving demand generation for partner campaigns and delivering customer success stories to the market. By lifting mindshare to develop unique and engaging partner experiences and the most innovative programs on the market, Google Cloud’s partner marketing strategies help keep their partners relevant in the highly competitive cloud market. 

Go-To-Market Strategy in a Post-Pandemic World

Despite Google’s status as a pioneer company of our digital world, the COVID-19 pandemic presented challenges of its own to Google Cloud’s partner marketing organization. The pandemic catalyzed what two years ago would have been decades’ worth of digital transformation, and Google had to pivot quickly in assessing their digital marketing best practices and adapt go-to-market strategies to the pandemic landscape.

While navigating the new digital landscape required rethinking time-tested strategies, Aimee notes that it paved the way for new and more effective marketing forums and channels—namely, the ability to host and promote broad-based and high-touch marketing programs virtually, which allows them to reach a greater audience. For example, Google’s annual Customer Conferences that once hosted tens of thousands of people around the world annually have been reimagined as hybrid forums — catering to both in-person and virtual customers and partners, and creating new opportunities to network, present, and engage audiences. 

Importance of DEI Initiatives

Aimee also notes that the pandemic brought Google and its partners together in a way previously unseen, which sparked the launch of a partner Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) group. “I’m really excited to see […] new programs to engage both our partners, but then with our partners to our customers, around important DEI programs, social impact projects, and how we’re really teaming together in some of the most important work out there together,” says Aimee. As DEI becomes central to both corporate conversations and operations, Matt Yorke notes these initiatives by Google are” bringing the scale that Google brings—and the resources—to help partners address DEI challenges.”

Advice for Partner Marketers 

When asked about top challenges for partner marketers to overcome, Aimee stressed the importance of finding and defining lanes. “Coopetition,” she says, is key, as there will always be situations where large partners work together and find aspects of their businesses overlapping. Partner marketing at its best finds the space where “1 + 1 = 3,” says Aimee, which requires savvy marketers to “navigate the more complex waters” of business overlap, where partners can best coexist in the spirit of innovation. 

About the CMO Perspectives Video Series:
This series spotlights industry-leading executives that are making a difference within the tech marketing landscape. Our host, Matt Yorke, Global Chief Revenue Officer of Foundry, dives into the latest marketing trends, providing peer insight for tech marketers.

Question: As we live, work, and do almost everything from a singular location, where are you finding inspiration?

• I’m inspired by the people at SAS, including my marketing organization, who pivoted to think more creatively than ever before to reach our audiences in new ways, leave lasting impressions and add value through virtual experiences.  I am inspired that data and analytics from SAS helped governments, hospitals, and organizations like the COPD Foundation to respond, recover and reimagine how they serve their communities. On a personal level, I am inspired by the ingenuity of my 10-year-old daughter to make a bigger impact with her time and resources – from creating custom backgrounds because remote learning can be ‘glitchy’ to finding ways to optimize her food bank delivery route. – Jennifer Chase, SVP and Head of Marketing at SAS

• I find inspiration from learning. Starting a new job, with a new team and new challenges all while working from home has brought a lot of new learnings, new obstacles and new opportunities. I am inspired and excited every day. I also redid my home office with some updated pictures and weekly flower arrangements to try and inspire the view for all the folks on my remote meetings! – Jamie Domenici, CMO at LogMeIn

• In these challenging times, in which many of us find ourselves more isolated than ever before, I continue to be inspired by other people. For example, over the past year I have been inspired by my work colleagues, the small business owners with whom I work with as a volunteer for the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, and the people I help as a volunteer at City Team in San Jose. Remaining connected to others and giving back keeps me grounded. – Isabelle Guis, CMO at Commvault

Question: What advice would you give to women working their way to a seat at the executive table?

• Do the job that needs to get done and not just the job you have. Speak up and be bold at the right times. Also, build a great network of people to turn to. This can be women or men who are allies to women, but a core group of people can be mentors, help you find new professional growth opportunities, or simply be a sounding board when you need advice or even to vent. – Jamie Domenici, CMO at LogMeIn

• I advise them to have high standards, and to be selective and smart about whose executive tables they are sitting at. We are at a unique moment today, as businesses and other organizations increasingly realize that diversity matters at all levels, including the executive level. However, if they want to realize their full potential as leaders, women should invest themselves in executive positions at organizations whose cultures feel right to them, and where they are free to be their authentic selves. – Isabelle Guis, CMO at Commvault

• Competence, connections and confidence are crucial to earning your seat at the executive table. To be successful, you must find skill gaps on your team and fill them, become a life-long learner and establish yourself as a valuable asset to your organization. It’s also important to have a personal board of advisors who can guide you throughout your career and remind you of your strengths when that nagging imposter syndrome takes hold. – Jennifer Chase, SVP and Head of Marketing at SAS

Question: You have been recognized for your hard work, marketing skills and leadership. How can leaders help elevate women and create a more diverse team?

• As someone with an international background, my key advice for building a diverse team is that it’s important to be inclusive and respectful of people’s differences. For instance, if someone is shy or has a conflicting opinion, a good leader will make room for them to have a voice. Giving people the confidence to bring their best, most authentic selves to work will reap great rewards for your organization. – Isabelle Guis, CMO at Commvault

• To elevate women, we must give them access to rewarding work – projects that involve collaborating with a variety of stakeholders, engaging in diverse activities and gaining exposure to new areas. We need to be servant leaders, taking time to understand the needs and talents of the women on our teams and giving them opportunities to make significant contributions. We also need to create programs and communities that empower women, help them build their professional networks and develop leadership skills beyond their day-to-day jobs – like the we have at SAS. – Jennifer Chase, SVP and Head of Marketing at SAS

• I believe that the biggest hurdle here is often to get business leaders to acknowledge that a discrepancy exists and commit, often publicly, to fixing that problem. Once that is addressed we must all be open to learning and understanding about the role we can play in making the playing field more equal.  For me this means setting actionable goals and metrics. These goals are regularly discussed and measured with my team and range from hiring targets to making sure we have diverse customers speaking on our behalf at events. – Jamie Domenici, CMO at LogMeIn

A big thank you to , , and for sharing these impactful perspectives with us. To continue to celebrate and elevate women in the marketing and business community, check out this blog highlighting a few key women-driven resources.

Tech marketers often speak about how their company’s solution improves the pace of digital transformation. But not many of them guarantee it. Appian is an exception.

Appian is so confident in its “low-code” software development platform that it recently launched the , a commitment to deliver a customer’s first development project in eight weeks.

“Too many companies struggle to build the applications they need for business transformation,” , Senior Vice President of Marketing at the 20-year-old company, said in a recent interview. “The guarantee is directly targeted at providing a level of assurance that we’re going to deliver. That gives us a very sharp level of differentiation in the market.”

For a nascent category such as low-code development, awareness and education are critical aspects of any marketing campaign. Spurway’s team maps content across all stages of the buyer journey, focusing top-of-funnel messaging around quality content “that actually educates [and] is of strong value to people who are trying to learn more about the space or an application,” Spurway says. “We put a lot of emphasis on making sure all the content we put out there is high quality, and consistent with our messaging.”

Spurway’s team also has built a deep library of customer video testimonials. “We’re using video to support a lot of messages we’re putting into market, both from a customer success standpoint but also to support particular things we see as competitive advantage from a feature or function perspective,” he says.

Customer testimonials are one example of how Appian’s marketing strategy doesn’t end when a customer makes a purchase. A dedicated post-sale customer marketing team is responsible for ensuring a consistent customer experience for customers after they buy the platform. This “land and expand” approach covers a variety of touch points, such as helping customers to articulate the value they’re achieving from the Appian platform within their own organization.

Appian also has some fun in helping customers celebrate their success. Low-code development is often explained as a Lego-like approach to building software. Appian has embraced that theme with a “” program in which customers receive a custom Lego sculpture to commemorate a successful project. “It’s an opportunity for the customer to celebrate their success,” says Spurway, “and an opportunity for us to build on the relationship.”

To Spurway, quality in marketing means keeping it simple, which is more difficult than it sounds. “The hardest thing to do is to be simple,” he says. “There’s so much noise out there, so you have to distill everything to a clear, simple message and express it in a way that resonates with a target audience at both an intellectual and emotional level.”

Software guarantees and Lego sculptures seem to check both of those boxes.

Agility is a defining characteristic of today’s B2B marketing organization. Asim Zaheer, CMO of Hitachi Vantara, certainly understands the importance of agility in the rapidly shifting digital marketing landscape.

“The ability to be nimble and adapt quickly are characteristics we’re looking for in all aspects of our organization,” Zaheer said in a recent interview. “Disruptions come when you least expect them. You have to be able to adjust – bring new solutions to market faster, launch campaigns quickly, target a new audience quickly – which makes agility important.”

Hitachi Vantara was from the combination of three Hitachi businesses: Hitachi Data Systems, Hitachi Insight Group, and Pentaho. For much of the past year, Zaheer’s team has focused on establishing a presence for the new brand. Now the focus shifts to driving demand, with an emphasis on penetrating new accounts, expanding market share, and entering new regions or new industries.

Data, not surprisingly, is guiding the journey. Hitachi’s products and solutions are designed to help customers get more value from their data – a perspective that Hitachi has applied internally to drive its own business.

“As a large, distributed, multibillion-dollar enterprise, we’re going through the same business transformations as our customers,” he says. “We’re instituting a lot of the technology we talk to our customers about to look for our own insights.”

The marketing team worked closely with IT – Zaheer views Hitachi Vantara CIO Renée McKaskle as a business partner – to build an analytics model to examine buying patterns and behaviors across different market and customer segments.

“We study who’s involved in purchases, where the budget lies, how long is the sales cycle, what content types resonate,” Zaheer says. A better understanding of who influences technology purchases allows the marketing team to tailor its messaging to different buyers.

“We’re making our content much more relevant to you based on your role,” he says. “We’ll always have industry-oriented content or regionally oriented content, but now we’re adding persona-based content.”

On a broader level, the goal is to create a frictionless experience for customers. The company recently created a new customer experience function that crosses sales, marketing, customer service, and product development; its charter is to analyze data across every touchpoint – digital and physical – to improve the overall customer experience.

Bringing digital and physical worlds together creates new challenges for evolving the marketing mix and measuring results.

“It’s no longer adequate for marketers to understand their particular area of expertise,” Zaheer says. “They have to understand the integrated marketing mix and how each element affects a customer’s perception of your solutions.”

Measuring success requires the right blend of technology, people, and process. “The ability to track what occurs in a cycle from beginning to end and whether it leads to business is a very detailed process that requires a lot of diligence,” Zaheer says.

And, as noted earlier, success also requires an agile mindset and approach.

“Be nimble and act quickly,” Zaheer advises. “Surround yourself with a team that has those skills, and you can effectively do anything.”