Episode Summary
In this episode of Sunny Side Up, host Chris Moody interviews Graceanne MacDonald and Liam Moroney, co-founders of Storybook Marketing, to discuss the complexities of demand generation. They share insights and strategies for marketers to understand their buyers and create successful demand-gen campaigns. They emphasize the importance of convincing people that your product is valuable and educating them about your offerings. Outbound efforts build trust, and text messaging, and reach potential customers on a limited budget. They also discuss internal partnerships, understanding customer problems through sales conversations, content creation, conversion tracking, and storytelling for attribution. The conversation highlights the need for sales and marketing alignment, B2B marketing tactics, product maturity curves, and navigating the buying process.
About the Guests
Graceanne (Domino) MacDonald
Graceanne began her startup career in the sales world, first leading SDR/BDR teams, followed by a side-step into RevOps before formally landing in demand gen. And she brings that dual sales/marketing perspective into all of the programs she builds.
Connect with Graceanne (Domino) MacDonald
Liam Moroney
Liam may be in the marketing minority; in that, he went to school for marketing. He has grown his career as a demand generation leader in the startup space and developed unique perspectives coming up through marketing ops and content marketing.
Both together and as individual marketing leaders, they’ve built teams and programs from scratch across a range of industries. You name it, they’ve seen it. Now, as Storybook, they use their combined experiences to support clients in building their best demand gen programs.
Key Takeaways
Demand generation is no longer just about capturing leads, but convincing people to take action.
Demand creation is less glamorous than it seems and requires an infinite war chest of VC money.
On-ramps and off-ramps are essential for generating awareness.
B2B buying is more pragmatic than emotional, so creating super fans is unrealistic.
Attribution is proof that you did your job, not necessarily informing whether things work.
Brand awareness is a spectrum starting from recognizing the brand to understanding what it does and eventually leading to preference.
Channels should not be treated as having to start and end the entire experience for someone.
Marketing's job is to make all channels work better and increase the efficacy of programs.
Content creates trust, not awareness.
Most purchases in tech are pragmatic, not emotional.
Outbound is an effective on-ramp and off-ramp for demand creation.
Outbound can be used to road-test messaging before investing in advertising.
SDR teams should be part of demand gen teams to remove competition for attribution.
Outbound and Inbound should work together in a symbiotic relationship.
Quotes
“Most of DemandGen is convincing people that you're worth listening to, and telling them what you do as effectively as you possibly can.” – Liam Moroney
“And I think all too often the competition for attribution leads us to get in our way and cause these sorts of off-ramps to be siloed from one another rather than pulling them all into the same umbrella.” – Graceanne (Domino) MacDonald
Recommended Resources
Books
Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This by Luke Sullivan and Edward Boches
Everybody Writes by Ann Handley
Newsletters
Shout-outs
Amanda Natividad - VP of Marketing at SparkToro
Rand Fishkin – CEO of SparkToro
Katelyn Bourgoin – CEO & Lead Trainer at Customer Camp
Connect with Graceanne (Domino) MacDonald | Connect with Liam Moroney | Follow us on LinkedIn | Website | LinkedIn