Today Pete Caputa joins the podcast to talk about how Databox is leveraging live chat + email in both the sales and support functions, how the approach differs from the traditional sales approach, and why it took Databox so long to roll it out (thoughtfully) over the last year.

Ground Up

72: John & Pete / How Databox Uses Live Chat For Sales & Support (& Why It Took So Long To Roll It Out)

April Dunford joins the podcast to discuss her surprise (at least to her) hit book, Obviously Awesome. On this episode, we dig into some of the core product positioning lessons that April discusses in the book and coaches clients on, including: - How to tell if you have weak positioning - Where positioning should fall on a marketer's/executive's priority list - How the approach to positioning changes depending on the stage of your company - The 10-step process for defining your positioning, and... - The most important positioning lessons that April has learned throughout her career Enjoy.

71: April Dunford / Product Positioning Has a Positioning Problem––Here's How to Solve It

Benji Hyam shares his experience running content marketing for a few companies in San Francisco and how that inspired him to start 2 companies––Wordable and Grow and Convert. The latter, a content marketing agency he's run for over 4 years, takes a unique approach to offering services around content marketing. Hear about their 4-step content framework for getting client's results no matter the industry.

70: Benji Hyam / Inside Grow & Convert's Content Marketing Framework for Growing Traffic, Leads, & Sales Through Content

On this episode, Casted CEO and cofounder Lindsay Tjepkema joins the show to talk about its recent public launch and round of funding, how the company is growing and what's been working so far, and why genuine and helpful conversations are the next big thing for B2B brands to leverage as a driver for growth.

69: Lindsay Tjepkema / Will Casted Become The HubSpot for Podcasts? Inside the First Podcast Platform for B2B

Meghan Keaney Anderson, VP of Marketing at HubSpot, joins the pod to provide what is essentially an oral history of marketing at HubSpot. Anderson has been with HubSpot for 9 years, and in her words, it's like being with 3 different companies during that span due to all the different phases of growth. In this episode, Meghan provides all the details behind what makes HubSpot's marketing engine move, including: - how the team is structured - how their planning process works - how they set goals and cascade them down to the individual contributor - how they stay flexible to make adjustments, improve efficiencies, etc. - the channels they're investing more in, the ones that have evolved, etc. Enjoy!

68: Meghan Keaney Anderson / A Decade(ish) of Marketing at HubSpot

In this episode, Wes Bush, author of Product-Led Growth, sits down with John to discuss all things PLG, including how it's different from marketing + sales-led organizations, the key levers for transitioning to product-led, how teams can get started, and much more.

67: Wes Bush / Why Product-Led Growth Is Outperforming Traditional Marketing & Sales Teams

Today we're joined by Devin Bramhall, VP of Marketing at Animalz and previously head of content at Help Scout. Animalz is a content marketing services company that works with some of the most well-known companies in SaaS––Intercom, Wistia, ProfitWell, Zendesk, and Clearbit just to name a few. Here, Devin takes us through her process and outlook for creating great content. Hint: It doesn't involve writing. (At least, not exclusively.)

66: Devin Bramhall / How Animalz Produces The World's Best Content

Daniel Waas spent 10 years managing and working on the same product––GoToWebinar. First with Citrix and later, after an acquisition, with LogMeIn, Waas's strength was perfecting and marketing a product that he himself knew better than anyone after hosting more than 500 webinars over the last 10 years. Here, Waas shares lessons learned after spending more than 10 years growing with the same company.

65: Daniel Waas / Lessons from 10 Years of Growing GoToWebinar

David Rostan, former VP of Sales & Marketing at Calendly, joins the pod to talk about how freemium helped shape Calendly's go-to-market approach and how growing market competition in the effort to own your calendar only sharpened Calendly's positioning.

64: David Rostan / Calendly's Approach to Freemium & How Competition Sharpened Its Positioning

We’re back! In this episode, John and Pete return for some friendly banter and conversation around how Databox approaches reporting on company performance including what gets measured, the cadence of sharing and updating others on performance, individual and team responsibilities, and much more.

63: John & Pete / Company Performance Is Not A Passive Sport

Vimeo's VP of Marketing, Melissa Matlins, dives deep into Vimeo's journey to become a full-service video platform and how they're repositioning the brand to support that.

62: Melissa Matlins / Vimeo’s Journey to Full-Service SaaS & 1M Paying Subscribers

ThriveHive CMO Dan Slagen joins John to discuss: - the challenges of marketing to the SMB - how to develop a marketing strategy for a high-churn, high CAC audience - how to foster a better working relationship between marketing and sales, and - how channel/partner marketing has been the key to it all

61: Dan Slagen / How (and Why) ThriveHive Went All-In On Small, Local Businesses

ActiveCampaign's CMO, Maria Pergolino, joins Ground Up to share: - how the company netted 80,000 customers by focusing more on product and less on marketing - why she's joined the company now and how marketing will continue to fuel growth, and - why they're leaning into brand and an already established community to grow

60: Maria Pergolino / How ActiveCampaign Grew to 80k Customers By Focusing On Product First

Ryan Bonnici, CMO at G2, checks in after 2 years at the company to share: - how they grew the team from 5 to 80 people - how he structures the marketing team into 3 pillars - how the marketing team measures success - the strategies that helped them grow monthly sessions from 500,000 to 5 million - his aggressive approach to goal-setting and planning - and more...

59: Ryan Bonnici / Inside G2's Explosive Growth

Andy Cook, cofounder and CEO at Tettra––a company wiki and internal knowledge base software––shares the company's journey from "Ramen profitability" to actual profitability over the course of several years. On this episode, he shares details around: - how he and his cofounder cut expenses to avoid going out of business - how a failed round of funding made profitability a necessity - how launching a freemium plan helped Tettra increase acquisition and adoption - how the team sets, prioritizes, and aligns around goals in order to stay on track

58: Andy Cook / Inside Tettra’s Long, Winding, and Persistent Path Toward Achieving Profitability

Ground Up is the honest portrayal of the hard stuff, breakthroughs, and lessons learned from starting or growing a business.

hubhopper

Ground Up

hubhopper