MarTech Interview with Allison Breeding, CMO at Apptio, an IBM company

Allison Breeding, CMO at Apptio talks about the importance of fueling B2B tech marketing with lots more creativity while sharing tips on driving pipeline and business performance:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Allison, tell us about yourself and your marketing journey through the years…

Thanks for having me! I currently serve as the CMO for Apptio, but I originally joined as SVP of Marketing three years ago, right around the time the pandemic hit. It was certainly an interesting time to start a new job! However, I’ve always been passionate about building quality teams from the ground up, which I’ve done numerous times in my career. So, when I joined Apptio, their marketing department was in a place of transition, affording me the ability to restructureand build out a new team, essentially from scratch. Many of whom came from within my own network and hit the ground running quickly.

I’ve always known I wanted to be in the business, having been one of those rare people that went to college for marketing and stayed with it. I knew from my first marketing class that it was the right path for me and from there, it was all about deciding which sectors I wanted to develop my skills in as a marketer. I haven’t looked back since!

What are some of the common myths surrounding the state of B2B tech marketing that you’d like to dispel? 

Great question. Here’s a myth I’ve been working every day for the past few years to dispel: lower budget = less results. The economic challenges of the last few years have introduced us to a new world, with budget cuts like I’ve never seen. As always, marketing budgets are the first to be cut when going through a downturn, but while the budget changes, the expectations and metrics do not. So, while it’s of course harder, it forces you to get creative as a marketer.

For example, in-person events have been minimal right after COVID, so we worked to make events quality over quantity and focused on ways to stick out through guerilla marketing. It’s important to customize that in-person experience in a digital world and do fun, outside of the box things to be remembered.

Most recently, we went to the FinOps X event in San Diego, and we all wore bomber jackets and handed out sunglasses, Top Gun style. It created a huge buzz across the event!

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When it comes to shaping marketing needs and teams given today’s challenges: what tips and best practices come to mind? Can you take us through some of your most relied on marketing strategies and the martech that you’ve used to drive impact for them?

Of course – our main strategy, and what I have coined as “our currency,” surrounds driving pipeline targets. So, my main Management by Objectives (MBO) is whether we hit our collective pipeline exit targets. We have all kinds of measurements around how to get there i.e., how much is required at the top of the funnel to drive leads to get to the middle of the funnel, so that they can then be turned into meetings that then turn into pipeline, and so on. But overall, if we’re not hitting pipeline exit targets, then we’ve got to take a step back and pivot our strategy.

For B2B tech marketers and martech-ers looking to revamp their core marketing models and martech to align to revenue goals (seeing how marketing is now meant to drive pipeline and performance more than ever), what thoughts come to mind?

Prioritize customer centricity. We are foundationally a customer-first company at Apptio, but early on, I realized that we weren’t giving our customers the experience that they deserved through marketing. We have a great customer success team and sales team, but that direct customer impact was falling short from a marketing perspective, so we created a customer marketing team. This involved aligning all our campaigns and approaches to ensure these customers have a great experience with us, and we can keep them up to speed on innovations. We also give them the tools to be brand evangelists, whether that’s within their own companies or live at events or speaking opportunities.

Leverage data-driven decision making. I work closely with the analytics and sales teams to be able to know and understand what the company data is telling us on a weekly basis – whether that’s performance tracking and understanding how campaign KPIs are measuring or gaining insight into customer behavior and preferences to be able to tailor campaigns, the list goes on. Data has become an indispensable tool to drive revenue growth and long-term success.

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