Marketing personas are those fictional people with the clever names like Statistical Stephen at RapidMiner or Marketing Mary at HubSpot. Personas are formed through extensive quantative and qualitative research, and who represent the ideal prospects for your product. Goofy names aside, complete getting alignment across your target personas and more broadly across your entire customer […]
Author Archives: Tom Wentworth
How to Send Almost Anything to Microsoft Teams using Webhooks and Zapier
Microsoft Teams is set to take on the new breed of collaboration apps like Slack and Hipchat. Each collaboration area is called a Team — and each Team can have multiple channels. Within a channel you have all the basics like chat (with emojis!) and document sharing, but it really gets interesting when you connect Teams to […]
Stop The Lead Scoring Madness
I recently came across a lead scoring article on the Mattermark blog that reminded me of a post I’ve been wanting to write for a while: the way nearly everyone is doing lead scoring is totally wrong. In the modern era of data-driven marketing where marketers boast about being able to connect every penny of […]
A Primer on Developer Marketing
TL;DR marketing to developers is hard, and you are probably doing it wrong. The unstoppable rise of the developer My former Acquia colleague David Churbuck introduced me to RedMonk’s Steve O’Grady and his 2014 book about how developers are taking over the world, called The New Kingmakers. The idea is that successful companies empower developers […]
Building a Data (Science) Driven Marketing Team
Marketers like to claim that we’re data driven, but are we… really? Sure, we track our lead conversion funnel from acquisition through conversion to paid customers. We use campaign attribution to figure out where to invest our budget to generate the highest return. We personalize our emails, A|B test websites and landing pages, and create […]
An Ode to Sonos
I’ve been using Sonos since 2005, when I wanted to add whole-house audio to a new home I had just purchased. At the time, multi room audio was a complicated mess — full of legacy companies requiring extensive wiring and proprietary controls I didn’t have. Sonos was exactly what I needed, so I took the plunge. Here’s […]
When Sales and Marketing Best Practices Become Average Practices
No one got fired for buying IBM? In the 80s, IBM dominated tech from the desktop to the datacenter. Buyers often picked IBM because they were safe choice, not the right choice. It didn’t matter. Buying IBM became the accepted best practice for CIOs. It was an emotional decision, not a rational one. People generally don’t […]
How I Got Past the Awkwardness of Self Promotion Without Becoming a Kardashian
Every time I come across one of those “top marketer” lists on Twitter or LinkedIn, a nervous anticipation builds as I quickly scan for my name. Sometimes I’m on them, most of the time I’m not. They are marketers we watch speak at tech conferences, follow on Twitter, subscribe to on Medium, and read about […]
Why I’m Killing the Marketing Qualified Lead
Five years ago, I was sitting at my desk working on a PowerPoint pitch for an upcoming customer visit. My boss stopped by and asked me a question that would change my life. Hey Tom, can you run marketing? Prior to that moment, I had spent my entire career in technical sales with a few […]
Before you agree to widening the top of your lead funnel…
Few things cause CMOs to panic more than hearing the dreaded phrase “we need to widen the lead funnel” from the head of sales. Or the CEO. Or maybe even the board. What they all really want is more qualified opportunities and ultimately more ARR. Maybe that means widening the funnel. Maybe not. But the […]
