MarTech Interview with Christopher P Willis, CMO at Acrolinx

Why is it becoming more crucial for content marketing and sales teams to work more closely together? Christopher P Willis, CMO at Acrolinx has some insights around it:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Christopher, tell us about your marketing journey in the tech market and more about your role as CMO at Acrolinx…

Before I began my career in marketing, I was working with a small consulting company. We needed someone to market our new products – and I was the closest thing we had, so I stepped in and ended up really liking it!

As a seasoned CMO: what would you say are the five fundamentals that need to shape every B2B marketing plan?

Closely align marketing and sales: At Acrolinx, I’m not only the Chief Marketing Officer, but also the Chief Pipeline Officer, and my responsibilities reflect that. There has to be synergy between these two teams. At Acrolinx, sales velocity is our golden metric, and it serves as a unifying goal for both teams. By ensuring that all marketing efforts contribute positively to sales velocity, we bridge the common gap between sales and marketing, fostering greater cohesion and effectiveness.

Collaborate creatively: Creativity plays a significant role in B2B marketing. It’s essential to encourage brainstorming and collaboration within the marketing team to come up with innovative and engaging marketing ideas. Creative strategies and unique content will help the brand stand out in a competitive market and capture the attention of potential customers.

Data is your friend: Rather than taking it a quarter at a time, we look at a full years’ worth of data to help determine trends and strategies that we want to engage with. This also helps us align our sales and marketing teams and work out what’s working and what isn’t.

Use new tools: The marketing landscape is continually evolving with the introduction of new tools and technologies. Embracing generative AI and other innovative tools can significantly enhance content generation and improve overall marketing performance. Staying up-to-date with the latest marketing tools allows us to maximize the impact of our content and streamline marketing processes.

Content governance is essential: With the rise of generative AI software and automation, maintaining content governance becomes crucial. We need to ensure that our marketing content aligns with our branding, messaging, and overall strategy. Having a robust content governance framework in place helps protect our brand reputation, maintain consistency and deliver a unified message to our audience.

Take us through some of your most relied on marketing strategies (ABM/others) and the martech that you’ve used to drive goals from them?

Our strategy is 100% aimed at targeting a very specific profile of B2B Enterprises and personas within those organizations.

In Enterprise SaaS, account-based marketing has worked really well for us. It’s a combined effort along with content, demand gen and our BDR team, and sales – we call it “Swarm.”  Some of our campaign tactics include segmented, personalized content experiences that allow us to target multiple decision makers and multiple personas within an organization.

We’ve been incredibly successful with high-touch experiences – inviting decision makers to an event, whether physical or virtual to learn from like-minded peers.

We have a BDR team that’s focused on inviting and following-up with those attendees, they are essential to our success. Our BDR team reports into marketing, just like demand gen does – those two teams are very aligned and supportive of each other’s success. And what motivates them to be this way is ultimately shared goals and a shared compensations structure.

And finally, what’s different today versus 20 + years ago when ABM was at its infancy (the concept of ABM isn’t new), is the technology – being able to track account engagement overtime and share it with our sales team so they can take action allows us to be nimble. It helps us understand the prospect’s connection to our brand. The tech has been essential to measure our success, especially when the sales cycle is long and complex. It’s powerful going to a sales rep and saying “engagement for your target accounts have increased 130% this quarter.” And being able to drill down into the data to show those actions, the accounts, the personas, what industry – it’s a sign that things in the middle of the funnel are moving in the right direction and that we should double down on the things we’re doing.

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When it comes to the typical structure of a B2B marketing team: given the newest trends and evolutions as to the marketing functions of today: how do you think marketing leaders should look at restructuring their teams?

It’s important to make sure that the content creation and sales teams work collaboratively. The siloed model of product marketing teams and content marketing teams working separately doesn’t make sense. If these teams don’t align on directives and messaging, it negatively impacts your content and therefore the customer experience.

Content marketing is pumped into demand generation and pipeline opportunities whereas product marketing involves creating top level messaging, product messaging, competitive analysis, and the progress pipeline. Enacting a flat organizational structure to allow teams to work cohesively will help bridge the gap and work toward the end goal of business success, which is measured by business and sales.

What type of martech features will become more prominent in this space in your view in the near-future? Also, when it comes to content software to improve content marketing outcomes, what are the types of features that will come to the forefront?

In the near-future of martech, content governance platforms will be vital for organizations to manage and align their content with brand guidelines. They’ll help protect and maintain content relevance amid the constant influx of new material. As for content software, AI-powered content creation, personalized content, and advanced data analytics will take the spotlight, revolutionizing content marketing outcomes

If you had to share five thoughts about the state of martech in the next decade, what would it be? 

Continued rise of automation: New automation will help take manual work out of the equation and will let people be more creative across the board. We’re already seeing this across platforms, across the board, with the rise in AI.

Regulation: AI regulation is now a top priority for policymakers in the U.S. and Europe. As AI continues to evolve and permeate various industries, risk mitigation becomes crucial. Business leaders are losing sleep over how to safely integrate generative AI into their workplaces. In the next decade, new guidelines, policies, and frameworks will significantly impact content creators across the enterprise. Striking the right balance between leveraging AI for good and ensuring its safe usage to mitigate risks will be paramount for enterprises.

Increased emphasis on customer experience: The customer experience is a vital aspect of content creation – as content makes connections where people can’t. There’s a shift now where enterprises are beginning to use and craft their content as the primary touchpoint versus directly reaching out to customer.

Strengthen businesses through branding: Ensuring that an enterprise is marketing its services and products is important, but it’s more important for this marketing to differentiate the enterprise from competitors. Marketing by branding will make businesses stronger moving forward.

Signal collection: In the next decade, understanding signal collection will be a game-changer for businesses. Signal collection refers to the process of gathering information from our expanding technology stack and effectively analyzing it to gain valuable customer insights. It’s essential to recognize the significance of signal collection in acquiring actionable data. By deciphering these signals, we can create highly targeted and personalized marketing strategies that resonate with our audiences on a deeper level. Successfully leveraging the potential of signal collection will provide us with a competitive advantage, allowing us to anticipate customer needs, tailor offerings and deliver seamless experiences.

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