Every week on Demand Gen Visionaries we sit down with marketing leaders from some of the world’s largest and fastest-growing companies to uncover the demand gen strategies that have been fundamental to their skyrocketing success. For the first time ever we have a special edition of Demand Gen Visionaries Live. We sat down with the marketing legends that built Dreamforce and world-class speakers who were excited to share their insights, inspire you, and to make you think. This episode features a live interview with featured panel speakers, Lauren Vaccarello, CMO at SalesLoft, Julie Liegl, CMO at Slack, Karin Flores, Vice President, Strategic Events, Customer Experience Center and Programs at Okta, and your host Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios.
Every week on Demand Gen Visionaries we sit down with marketing leaders from some of the world’s largest and fastest-growing companies to uncover the demand gen strategies that have been fundamental to their skyrocketing success. For the first time ever we have a special edition of Demand Gen Visionaries Live. We sat down with the marketing legends that built Dreamforce and world-class speakers who were excited to share their insights, inspire you, and to make you think.
This episode features a live interview with featured panel speakers, Lauren Vaccarello, CMO at SalesLoft, Julie Liegl, CMO at Slack, Karin Flores, Vice President, Strategic Events, Customer Experience Center and Programs at Okta, and your host Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios.
---
Think of part of your budget as an innovation fund. What are the big bets that you and your team have come up with and, and those could vary. If you can architect it right, with the right customer experiences, and the right amplification across press and social, doing something kind of crazy and stunt like can actually make sense. - Lauren Vaccarello, CMO, SalesLoft
It’s about differentiating, if you can do an event in a way that is going to be special, whether it's going to an event or throwing an event, how do you make it different? It can't just be status quo, you have. Give people a reason that it's exciting, and that it matters.- Julie Liegl, CMO at Slack
I think we are working in a world now where we really need to think about convincing people, and so I think you need to entertain them, motivate them, and inspire them beyond product, and what's going on in the world. - Karin Flores, Vice President, Strategic Events, Customer Experience Center and Programs at Okta
---
Episode Timestamps:
*(04:46) Marketing in uncertain times
*(07:13) Thinking of your budget as an innovation fund
*(08:40) Investing in like big name events this year
*(09:18) Differentiating you events from competitors
*(13:51) Curating an experience that's personalized
*(15:50) Human marketing and bringing humans together
*(20:08) Inspiring people beyond product
---
Sponsor
Demand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.
---
Links
Connect with Lauren on LinkedIn
Connect with Julie on LinkedIn
Connect with Karen on LinkedIn
Learn More about Caspian Studios
[00:00:32] Ian: Hello, this is Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios, and this week we have a special edition of Demand Gen Visionaries live from Dreamforce. This is never before-seen footage. We were live at Dreamforce with three of our best pals, Julie, Lauren, and Karin.
[00:00:50] Ian: We were talking marketing, we were talking to uncut budget items. These are three of the ladies that help build Dreamforce. So we talked a bunch about events, some inspiring stories, some ways that they're thinking about spending money in this sort of new economy. With all of the turmoil and things that are going on in the market, it's uh, no better time to think about how you're investing, where you're gonna be investing.
[00:01:12] Ian: And these three ladies know exactly how to do it. So, yeah, it's a wonderful conversation. I hope you all enjoy it. As always, if you have any feedback, if you have any thoughts, if you have any questions, you can hit us up any time, team@caspiandstudios.com. You can find me on LinkedIn, add and Faison, or on Twitter, add and Faison.
[00:01:30] Ian: If you ever have any questions, would love to answer those and, um, we can get 'em back to, uh, Julie, Lauren and Karin, if you have some follow up as. Thanks again for listening, and thanks to our presenting sponsor qualified, we love them dearly. It was so awesome being at an event with so many qualified customers, casting customers, hanging out, dancing, singing, all of that stuff.
[00:01:52] Ian: The event was so hot that the fire alarm actually went off, and so we had to cool it down with some dope beverages, but it was a wonderful time. We hope to do more DGV lives in the future, and we can't wait for every single one of you to meet us at one of those. So thanks again for listening. And hope you enjoy.
[00:02:10] Maura: Okay. Hello everyone. Welcome to Demand Gen Visionaries live at Dreamforce. It is so fun to be back together after two years of not being together. Love your participation. You're ready to go. My name's Maura. I'm the CMO here at Qualified. Thank you guys so much for joining us. We launched this show about three years ago.
[00:02:35] Maura: We wanted a spotlight. The best and brightest CMOs in the industry. And today we bring you the show live. So we have an all-star lineup, and these are the legends that built Dreamforce. These are the women who helped build the best marketing event of the year. So we have Karin Flores, VP of events at Okta.
[00:02:54] Maura: Julie Legal, former CMO of Slack, Lauren Vacarello, CMO of SalesLoft, and our host Ian phase on. So thank you guys for joining us with. Let's start the show and let's, uh, let's say a toast to Dreamforce. Here's to all of us feed back together and here's to us having an amazing conversation and kicking off a great event.
[00:03:17] Maura: So thank you guys for joining us.
[00:03:25] Ian: Welcome to Demand Gen Visionaries. I'm I Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios, and today I am joined by three special guests. Ladies, how are. Hello. Is that good? Um, so you'll notice that most of the folks have a, uh, a keeper cut panel in front of you. So what we're gonna do is a little analog version of, uh, uh, uncut budget items.
[00:03:47] Ian: So we do this as a segment in our, in our podcast to say, Hey, CMOs, what are your three most uncut budget items? And so today we're gonna rip through a bunch of uncut budget items. And we want, like, if you're like, Hey, that's something we're gonna keep, Hey, this is something we're not gonna keep. You can kind of use those.
[00:04:04] Ian: Um, and if you're like in between, you can just kind of go in between. Um, so to start off, I think, uh, As we have, you know, we're at hundred episodes of Demand Gen Visionaries, which is pretty crazy. And, um, what we've heard a lot of is sort of, you know, from the very beginning of, of Covid through to now that uncut budget, budget items have changed.
[00:04:29] Ian: Uh, how you track ROI has changed. What are the types of things you're spending money on has changed. And, uh, and we've been hearing basically this sort of, kind of up and down roller coaster of how do you think about, uh, marketing? And what we wanted to talk about today is, is sort of this idea that obviously we live in very uncertain times.
[00:04:53] Ian: There's sort of, the market is tumultuous right now. Uh, marketers and CMOs are under. Uh, even more scrutiny than they sort of had been in the past. Um, how do you spend your money? How do you spend money the right way? So we have three women who have, uh, figured that out, uh, time and time again, and, uh, and we want to leverage their expertise.
[00:05:12] Ian: Yeah. And so one of the things that separates sort of the elite CMOs and and demand gen leaders is the ability to make bets that have outsized returns. So obviously, you know, when we do uncut, there's the money that you put into, you know, seo, there's money you put into Google AdWords, There's all those sort of things.
[00:05:34] Ian: Table stakes you have to do, but those campaigns that have a massive outsized result. So we're gonna talk about making big bets today. And so let's start off Lauren. . Um, how do you think about making big bets?
[00:05:47] Lauren: Uh, that's a great question. Um, so I start to look at, so everything I start to do, I look at a marketing funnel when I'm figuring out what are the bets I wanna make, and I'm doing this right now in my role, and I start to look at what are the levers if I pull, will have the biggest impact.
[00:06:01] Lauren: So going from. Here's web traffic, here's form use, here's form completes, here's leads, here's opportunities. There's areas that you'll start to see and go, Something is funny here. Something is off and this is where I wanna go and make a really big investment. And a, a good example of it is, and my two roles ago at CMO of Talent, uh, I got there and digital was a complete disaster.
[00:06:25] Lauren: And they never invested in infrastructure. They never invested in optimization. They never invested in things. When someone comes to your website, how do you engage with them? And for me, that was a, we are growing slower than the rest of the company. Every part of the funnel looks wrong. I'm gonna put real money here, I'm gonna put real effort here and see what happened.
[00:06:44] Lauren: And it turned out that by doing that, um, after about a year, the website was driving 60% of opportunities from marketing. Woo. ,
[00:06:56] Ian: Julie, Big bets
[00:06:57] Julie: . Um, well, I like to think of, there's a part of your marketing budget that's always your meat and potatoes. There's the things that you need to keep the business going.
[00:07:05] Julie: Like you can't turn off certain things all the way. But I like to have kind of like think of part of your budget as also like in, in an innovation fund. So what are the. That you and your team have come up with and, and those could vary. I think a lot of time, and Karin, have I experienced this a lot, it could be something really splashy in person that at first blush looks sort of wasteful.
[00:07:28] Julie: But if you can architect it right with the right customer experiences and the right. Amplification across press and social, doing something kind of crazy and stunt like can actually make sense. So I think always thinking of your budget as like, I have some money to play with and try something big and if something seems crazy, it may be crazy or it may be interesting and it may be something that can let you stand out.
[00:07:49] Julie: And if you do, can you apply kind of your marketing lens to it of how do I make this not just be my crazy idea, but something that I can actually turn into something big or something more?
[00:08:00] Ian: Karin, what about you?
[00:08:01] Karin: Yeah. Um, I would say similarly, um, for me it's about, uh, what is, well, what do I need that, um, I build the house and keep the lights on, the meat and potatoes.
[00:08:10] Karin: But far and beyond, at least in my experience, what I've learned is you have to think big and you have to punch above your belt, your weight belt, because if you don't, you'll look small and, um, sometimes it's worth making a crazy investment. Um, but definitely you have to push yourself out of your comfort.
[00:08:29] Ian: So obviously the three of you fundamental in the early days of Dreamforce and building an amazing event. How many people, uh, are gonna be investing in like big name events this year? Keeper Cut, Uh, big name trade show events. Ooh. Ooh. All right. Wow. Got a, got a couple cuts. Uh, and, and about I'd say 80% keeps, So this is actually something that we've, we've seen a lot on the show where, Marketers being really selective with the events that they're looking at.
[00:09:03] Ian: Uh, so Karin, how do you approach events? Obviously this is, this is what you do, right? I'm gonna be controversial. I'm in the cut , I'm on the cut sign there. Um, I, I think there's, um, some interesting things going on in the event space, especially in the industry event space, association space. I think they're 10 years behind.
[00:09:19] Karin: I'm so bored with them trying to reinvent a four day event. Um, Trying to redo what they did in 2019. I don't think it's worth your, um, investment. So I would say you have to look really hard at the industry events you're going to. And are they pushing themselves? Are they reinventing it? Are you really gonna get the return?
[00:09:40] Karin: Because if you're just investing three or $400,000 in a 20 by 20 on a sad trade show floor, not worth. Cut. Ooh. All right. Wow.
[00:09:53] Ian: Juile. What do you think?
[00:09:54] Julie: I like to point out that Karin runs events for a living, so I hope I have a job tomorrow. Really wants a week off. Um, come to opting. No. Um, so I'm not in an operating role right, right now, so I don't actually have a budget to cut or not cut.
[00:10:09] Julie: But I, you know, what I think is interesting and I think what you said about, you know, boring four day events or turning up and having. Whatever, 10 by 10 booth. I think that's kind of always been true and I know the world is different now and there's, it's so great to see the energy of Dreamforce back and people being in person, in person.
[00:10:26] Julie: Events have always played a really special role in B2B events and there's always been all these stats, like people wanna meet. Face to face, it's the best way to build trusted relationships. But the thing that we weren't afraid to do at Dreamforce, and I actually worked on the first ones cuz I'm a hundred years old, is we were not afraid to do them completely differently.
[00:10:45] Julie: And I feel like people look at it now and they're like, Oh yeah, that's how you do a show. But you know, in 2002, 2003, like you did not do a show with. Wacky themes and and costumes and whatever shiny blazers these people are wearing over here, that I desperately need one. That's what you should be spending your marketing budget on.
[00:11:06] Julie: So I think like differentiating, if you can do an event in a way that is going to be special, whether it's going to an event or throwing an event, how do you make it different? Like it can't just be status quo, you have. Give people a reason that it's exciting and that it matters. Yeah. We, you say a person who clapped that one person we pay
[00:11:31] Ian: . Um, yeah, we, we talk about, uh, at, at Cassian all the time that you have to be remarkable. Your marketing has to be remarkable, which means that people need to talk about it. They need to like remark to other people. When I was in, uh, the elevator last night at, at one of the. Two people are like reminiscing about what they did at Dreamforce in 2019.
[00:11:49] Ian: And this is the party we went to. And this is sort of stuff like when you run an AdWords campaign, you're not gonna remember that in six years and be like, remember when you clicked on that one end?
[00:11:58] Lauren: I, I remember the AdWords campaign I ran 20 years ago.
[00:12:01] Lauren: Yeah, , you remember it, but that's it. Uh, but yeah, so, so it, it kind of, you know, begs the question of like, how do you make something that's so memorable?
[00:12:12] Lauren: That's something that like, you know, there's all these, you could meet your next spouse, You could meet your, meet your next, like co-founder, your company. You could, you know, see Bruno Mars and, and remember where you were. Like that's the thing that makes events great, is all of that. But what we try to do is pack a bunch of people like, you know, in a, in a room and, and talk to 'em.
[00:12:33] Lauren: Yeah. And I, I think a lot of it for events, whether it's sponsoring or running event, it's the start with why they, we are going to sponsor this event because we have always done, it doesn't make sense anymore. And attendees don't just wanna show up, go do the same thing. Cram into maybe we do here 5,000 people in a room with a bunch of strangers that that's not there anymore.
[00:12:57] Lauren: We, uh, we're reevaluating our event strategy, and it is, why are we going there? Why is the audience there? Is this the best way to reach them? And what we're really pushing is not should we sponsor this event or not sponsor this event? It's what are we trying to accomplish and does the event fit into that strategy?
[00:13:15] Lauren: And if we're running an event and owning an event, we're having a lot of hard conversations about it. Of is the best way to do this, Let's throw a big customer conference or, . People want more intimate connections. They want relationships. So rather than a massive customer conference, is it a smaller road show?
[00:13:34] Lauren: Is it executive events? Is it more of a summit? So really to your point, rethinking but thinking about where are people today, what are they care about today and what are we trying to achieve?
[00:13:44] Ian: So what about small batch events like a digital, uh, wine tasting or chocolate event keeper cut? Is anyone doing that sort of stuff?
[00:13:53] Ian: I'd say about most, mostly keeps a couple, a couple cuts there. It it's something that we, uh, we've heard on the show that has been an uncut budget item is those like sort of small batch events. And part of the lure is that you can control sort of all the variables. And it's not just a bunch of salespeople like descending on.
[00:14:11] Ian: The people that they can actually build those connections. Karin, are y'all doing stuff like that or thinking about that?
[00:14:16] Karin: I would argue that a small batch in person event is more impactful. Um, really where you're curating an experience that's personalized and, um, truly about peer tope networking. I think the small batch digital events have served their purpose, but I think they're gonna peter off.
[00:14:35] Lauren: Yep. Funny. We, uh, we just hosted, so at SalesLoft we just had our customer conference in Austin, and then we had an offshoot that was a 50 person executive event. We've never done something like it before. We had. White House economists come in and give this great talk. We had this like live interactive learning.
[00:14:53] Lauren: We focused a ton on content. Do you know what I got the best feedback on of the entire event? Round table discussion, . Oh, round table pizza. Oh my gosh. They loved it. The, our CRO rented in Airbnb and said, You know what, Let's have the after party at my Airbnb and. Is like local band that he's friends with, who by the way are incredible.
[00:15:17] Lauren: So we had this local Austin band playing music in the backyard and 35 of 50 of the world. Probably most badass CROs hanging out at an Airbnb together listening to this live band, and they went, No, we've never done something like that before. That was like, that was the thing for the event, and it's, And I was like, If that's all it took, I would've spent a lot less money on that economist.
[00:15:42] Julie: Yeah, I know. I mean, I feel like as B2B marketers, which I know most of this audience is like, we have spent so much of our careers thinking about. ROI and what does this decision maker care about? But like we are also marketing to the very same humans that the serial companies and the wireless companies and everybody else's marketing to.
[00:16:01] Julie: And I think something that Salesforce is the place that we all kind of grew up as marketers, was never afraid to treat its customers like humans. And I think coming out of covid, the desire for human connection is even stronger than it was before. And not everyone wants to do. Through work related stuff, but if you can provide that, I think there's a real appetite for it.
[00:16:20] Julie: So showing up as a company, as a human marketing is a human and bringing humans together, there's a big space for that.
[00:16:27] Ian: One of the things, uh, that we, uh, here as a, as a common, uh, topic on the show is syndication keeper cut content syndication. Ooh. Yeah. Lot of cuts.
[00:16:42] Lauren: I'm gonna go strong. Cut for like the last decade, sorry.
[00:16:47] Ian: Well, so, and the reason why I bring it up is because again, it goes back to sort of that, that element of control. I mean, why do, so you said keep for cut for the last decade. Why?
[00:16:56] Lauren: It's just I'm, no one's gonna be happy with, I'm about to say contents, indications, really lazy. It doesn't work. I haven't seen ROI from contents indication in more than 10 years.
[00:17:07] Lauren: It's a great way to like juice your lead volume though. And sometimes as marketers, we need to juice lead volume. Ultimately it's, I just, if someone can tell me a place that they've gotten a good return on this, I'm open to being wrong. I'm just hope
[00:17:23] Julie: Lauren I feel a little betrayed because I used to work with you and I used to give you a lot of budget and you'd be like, You know what the secret is julie content syndication
[00:17:35] Lauren: . We used to get S SCRs to qualify all of those. First. Okay. So yes. Okay. But now they're just selling you. Here's the leads. And I'm like, Who is the people that qualify these for me? And no one does that anymore.
[00:17:47] Julie: Okay, we'll talk about that after
[00:17:48] Lauren: . Okay.
[00:17:50] Ian: . Um, so one of the things that we hear a lot as well is that marketers are spending a ton of work to, uh, do all these different campaigns, to do in-person events, to do this stuff, and then once they get to the website, there's sort of nothing there.
[00:18:05] Ian: Obviously, our amazing sponsor qualified who put this all together, which we love.
[00:18:11] Lauren: Can, can I do a plug on how I got all that extra money from the website?
[00:18:15] Ian: Yeah, go for sure.
[00:18:16] Lauren: Was after I bought qualified.
[00:18:17] Ian: Yeah. There you go.
[00:18:19] Lauren: Yes. Um, actually true ,
[00:18:22] Ian: But I think that what we're seeing, which is a really common, uh, Thing that people are saying is uncut now is rev ops, which is like, Hey, if you don't have all of your marketing operations, all of your revenue ops, if you don't have that stuff down cold, then what's the point of running all these other brand, brand campaigns?
[00:18:38] Ian: What's the point of running these demand campaigns? Uh, Julie, you're nodding along. What do you think?
[00:18:42] Julie: Uh, yes. I mean, so I think I was very lucky to grow up at a company like Salesforce. A lot of my marketing career was there and because of the nature of the products that we sold, a lot of the stuff was.
[00:18:54] Julie: There as we were building it, and obviously technology keeps evolving, but when I went to a company like Slack, which has a massive self-service engine and it bolted on an enterprise engine, a lot of that infrastructure wasn't there that I had taken for granted for so long. And you know, I'm always a little wary of marketing being taken down to an exact science.
[00:19:14] Julie: But on the other end, like I'd like to know if I generate a lead or somebody to come to the website. Something could happen for them that might lead to them, you know, it get to a person maybe if they have that level of interest. So I think it's just, it's, it's sort of that missing piece of, and it became even more apparent and, and more important to me when I went to a company with both, not that infrastructure there and this sort of massive top of funnel and a real need to be able to scientifically move that through to more revenue for the.
[00:19:48] Ian: Karin, I'm curious, what's, what's one of your, uh, what's one of your uncut, bent, or event, uh, items that you're like, Hey, if you're doing an event, you gotta make sure that you're doing. Yeah.
[00:19:59] Karin: Um, probably, that's a tough one. Um, I would say executive c-suite engagement for me, where we are in our company, in our journey.
[00:20:09] Karin: And, um, Julie's gonna love this. I would say you have to. This kind of goes back to, I think where we are, uh, right now. I think we need to entertain our customers and our partners and our prospects. So I would say luminary speakers. I need, you know, I, I need to draw. I think we are working in a world now where we really need to think about convincing people to buy a ticket and fly out to San Francisco and spend a few days at Dreamforce.
[00:20:36] Karin: And so I think you need to entertain them and motivate them and inspire them beyond. Beyond product, right. What's going on in the world? They have a killer lineup and Salesforce has excelled in this for many, many years and set the benchmark and um, I think it's something that I inspire to at Okta as well.
[00:20:55] Ian: Yeah. We're, we're about to, uh, Uh, to a sort of multier blog post on this idea of like, entertainment. And if you think of it as an XY access, you have education on one side and edu and, uh, entertainment on the other. And the vast majority of our stuff is like lower left quadrant. Like not that educational, not that entertaining.
[00:21:13] Ian: Uh, the good stuff is like educational, but not that entertaining and virtually nothing is on the, the right side because it's like, man, it's not that.
[00:21:21] Lauren: Well, where, where does this? Would this matter? Educating. It depends how much people, how is it going so far? Ok. If, if we're educating show keep everyone, just show the blue one.
[00:21:33] Lauren: infotainment.
[00:21:35] Ian: Um, okay. So, uh, Yeah, yeah. Anyways, yeah. So I mean, I think that that's like. Yeah, we, we are competing now with, with Marvel and Disney Plus and all these things. We have Hulu, everything is in device. It's on the go. It's all these things, like that's who you're competing against for people's attention span.
[00:21:51] Ian: And if you write shitty blog posts, like people aren't gonna listen or pay attention. Um, okay. Uncut budget items, uh, put up your paddle and yell one out and we'll do some keeper. Cut. Uh, who's got an uncut bud budget item that they only hear some stuff on Anyone. All right, I'll keep going.
[00:22:11] Julie: Podcast. Hey, , keep getting a lot of,
[00:22:20] Ian: It's more than just a podcast.
[00:22:22] Ian: Dammit. There's video too. Um, yeah, What do you think? Content series, podcast and video series?
[00:22:30] Lauren: I think it's a way to stand out right now if you do it well. Uh, What is hard and it's content without distribution. And it reminds me of sort of the early days of content marketing where everyone was like, Look, I wrote a blog post.
[00:22:42] Lauren: I made this ebook, I created a podcast. But no one sees it or uses it, then you absolutely shouldn't do it, and it's a waste of money. But if you can create grade content and then actually distribute, distribute it, it's incredible. And, um, uh, having done some cod oh, nevermind.
[00:23:02] Julie: Yeah, that was some hot content.
[00:23:07] Lauren: Hot.
[00:23:12] Ian: Oh yeah. So analyst relations. Analyst, relat.
[00:23:15] Lauren: If you're selling to the enterprise, you need it. We just, if you're selling to the enterprise, you need it.
[00:23:21] Ian: Well anyways, thanks. Thanks
[00:23:26] Ian: Remember that time when we were at that event in the fire alarm .
[00:23:30] Maura: This is why we do on demand podcast.
[00:23:33] Ian: Yeah.