Hey, Webinerds! We’re back with another episode of CMO Confessions, our B2B podcast with the top leaders in marketing and sales today. Today’s CMO Confessions features Aaron Cullers, Head of Marketing at Madison Logic.
In today’s episode, Aaron and Cheri Keith, Head of Strategy and Research at ON24, discuss Aaron’s new role at Madison Logic, B2B trends and marketing in a pandemic world.
As always, you can find the full episode of CMO Confessions on Podbean here an edited transcript of our conversation below.
You can learn more about Aaron’s career and experiences through his LinkedIn page here and his Twitter feed here.
If you’re interested in listening to our growing podcast series, you can find all of our episodes right here on Podbean. Alternatively, you can also find us on both iTunes and Google Play stores.
Welcome to another edition of CMO Confessions with Cheri and Aaron!
Table of Contents:
Rejoining the Practitioner World with Madison Logic
Working Remotely
B2B Marketing that Engages Buyers
Signals and Calls-to-Action
B2B Buzzwords
B2B Trends and Their Impact on Technology
Peloton Webinars and Brands on TikTok
Challenges to Overcome and Q4 Priorities
Cheri Keith:
Hello, and welcome to CMO Confessions, the B2B marketing and sales podcast, where I speak with amazing guests about what it really means to be a marketing leader in today’s business world. I’m Cheri Keith Head of Strategy and Research at ON24. On today’s episode, I am joined by Aaron Cullers, Head of Marketing at Madison Logic, an advertising and content syndication platform designed to help marketing and sales with account-based strategies. Aaron, thanks so much for coming on today.
Aaron Cullers:
Yeah, absolutely, Cheri. It’s nice to chat with you again, as well. Appreciate it.
Rejoining the Practitioner World with Madison Logic
Cheri Keith:
Yeah, of course. So we want to start by congratulating you on this new role you just joined. Can you tell us a little bit about the job and what made you decide to take it?
Aaron Cullers:
Sure. Yeah. This is the end of week six and I think we know in this space that is a bit of a lifetime as well, right? A lot can certainly happen in six weeks.
The reason I made the switch, prior to joining Madison Logic, I had spent four years as a consultant. Actually, we were colleagues at the time as well in the SiriusDecisions and then Forrester environment. And for me ultimately, I took a look at where I was in my career and where I wanted to go and saw that the speed at which the industry was evolving, that technology was advancing, all of those things. If I had kind of continued on the path that I was on, I started to feel like that might pass me by a little bit without having fingers on the buttons, so to speak, of what was going on and what we were trying to execute. I was just a little bit worried that I might have a more challenging time making the shift back to a practitioner later on than the time right now. So the timing felt right.
As far as where I went and why I went to Madison Logic, ultimately, it spoke to all of those areas I just laid out. In terms of, this is a true hands-on environment where folks are tasked with delivering results and that’s exactly what I wanted to do.
As a consultant, I was able to swoop in and kind of say, “All of this doesn’t work, maybe change some things” and then get on a flight literally and swoop out of there and not get to stick around to see the damage from the grenade I tossed behind me. I truly wanted to have the responsibility to drive that change and be there when things got better or if they didn’t, continue to pull some levers a little bit and go from there.
So, I love Madison Logic. I love our solutions for our audience. Love how we can apply our own work and our best practices for our customers now. I just think that the upside is pretty large and that’s pretty exciting.
Cheri Keith:
That’s really a good way of putting it. And I think you hit the timeline right. I was always told when I joined that consultant-analyst world, that three to five years is what you really need to think about. So I’m with you. I was a little bit further behind you. It took me just under five years to make the jump, but I think that it makes a lot of sense, right?
I think you could say that about anything. People who are on the agency side too long. I know you’ve worked in agencies before as well. It’s like, you need to kind of diversify every couple of years, otherwise you really are going to get pigeonholed in the middle of your career or early part of the career. We are both very much spring chickens right now. But I liked the grenade analogy. I’m going to have to use that. Now you have to actually catch the grenade and try to diffuse it and make everything better.
Aaron Cullers:
Yeah. I didn’t intend for the analogy to be super violent, but in a way it can be, right? It was so funny at SiriusDecisions when I was there as a consultant, I often considered the consultant role to be that of a therapist as well, and working with clients and explaining, “Hey, the challenges you have, the problems you’re facing, they can be solved. You are not crazy people. This is a common thing we see day after day. And so your frustrations or your milestones and challenges, those are all things that we can get through and you can overcome.”
Switching back to the practitioner side and trying to kind of pull it back to my violent analogy there. It is very much like “change is hard.” You have to roll up your sleeves a little bit and you have to kind of keep climbing up a hill when sometimes habits are there or performance is doing well so behaviors are entrenched and what have you. It’s a tremendous learning experience for me to be back on the practitioner side, to be in this firm and formal of a leadership role. I just think it’s just going to be more fun to keep fighting that fight as we move forward.
Cheri Keith:
Yeah, totally. One of the hardest things I found was onboarding after you had been there a little bit of time. I’m a total commitment-phobe when it comes to all things job and career related. So having been somewhere almost five years, and then all of a sudden having to start over and onboard, that was something I struggled with. I mean, yes, I started the week the West coast went into lockdown, so it was just a strange thing. How has the onboarding and just like getting up to speed gone?
Aaron Cullers:
So that’s an interesting question. I love your call out that when you made your switch, it was right before the lockdown. I waited a little bit longer. I thought it would be better to wait until there was not only the pandemic, but also massive amounts of civil unrest and a global recession. I was like, “These are the characteristics that signal time for change. It’s never going to get better than right now to make a move.”
It’s funny four years, five years for you. You get comfortable. You get comfortable because you’re familiar with what you’re doing and what’s expected of you to drive success. To make the switch, you’re starting all over. It’s not as dramatic as when you’re a new kid in school and how do you make friends, but it is a little bit of how do you learn what our priorities are and how do you cut through the competing priorities that you hear as well, in regards to this is important right now or is it important later and where can we actually focus our line of attack to drive success in the short-term. That’s been tough.
Everyone makes that fire hose analogy. And it’s really funny because I will say a couple of times in the past six weeks, I kind of felt like one o’clock in the afternoon, two o’clock like, “That’s it. I know more is coming in for the day so let’s turn the hose off because I will be of no value if I can’t actually step back and just think for one second about what’s all going on.” Because there’s just so much to learn and get caught up on with the transition and with onboarding. I don’t envy the folks that design it. I’d forgotten how uncomfortable it can be doing it again, after a couple of years of not.
Cheri Keith:
Right. Especially a traditional onboarding experiences is you’re spending a week in-person somewhere and you sit in a conference room and a merry band of everyone from the company rolls through. They talk to you in this cohort of people who are all getting onboarded at the same time and the only thing they have in common is that they have a similar start date. They are from everywhere in the org.
Aaron Cullers:
Yeah.
Cheri Keith:
I was talking to one of our executives the other day and he was referencing someone in the company that he doesn’t have a lot of exposure to anymore, but they came on board the same day and they have this bond. I think we’re actually going to lose out on that. It’s not mentorship, but it’s like the people who are just having that same, starting at a company at a specific date and that experience that it drives from it.
Aaron Cullers:
Yeah. I don’t know when, to that point, when will I meet some of these coworkers and these people? It’s probably going to be another year or so until there’s some face-to-face interaction. We’re planning our sales kickoff next year now, and it will be a completely virtual event. And those are the things where the people that hired me, people that have put trust in me to play a vital role in leading the marketing for this organization, they’re not going to get a chance to meet me until next year. I am remarkably handsome in person and they’re just missing out on that and so I feel for them too. I’m kidding!
Working Remotely
Cheri Keith:
They’re going to miss that! They need that! Where’s your company headquarter? Where’s Madison headquartered?
Aaron Cullers:
New York City. So in Manhattan itself.
Cheri Keith:
Oh, okay. So even then you would be a remote team member, even longer term.
Aaron Cullers:
That’s right. That’s right. I am based in Austin, Texas, where we have super summer and summer. So two full seasons a year. I have no intention, in the short term, to probably leave this environment. So it’s going to be a continuation of the way it was for me and my prior role. That was a remote position as well. The difference being, of course, the world had not kind of dropped the floor out from under itself where people could see each other in-person and travel. So I think you’re right. And it’s been an interesting change that is still going to probably be our day-to-day for the next unknown period of time.
I will say this, what’s also different is that because of the change, Madison Logic has been a very face-to-face type of company with the office and everyone working together and seeing each other. When the move was forced upon it to go remote and be distributed, the decision was made that we will be doing video calls. We will be able to see each other. And that’s a change as well. I have to make sure I do my hair and I’m wearing a t-shirt that is not a ripped Metallica t-shirt for some calls and things like that.
So, again, all in the interest of, everyone’s trying to figure it out, right? How do we keep the energy going? How do we make sure we’re all collaborating and connected? I’m looking forward to looking back on the research that’ll be driven out of these sorts of changes to our worlds these days.
Cheri Keith:
Yeah, that’s interesting. Like you, I was going to be remote anyway, but I guess we’re just going to be remote for a very long time. It’s going to be awkward to meet people the first time, because you feel like in a way, because of the video chats, I feel like most of your teams will feel like they know you. But then outside of like your org, it can also be interesting too. And I always keep going back to, we use Slack internally, the marketing team, and I’m like, is my humor landing or not? These people must think I’m insane, but they just haven’t met me in person. All they have are some video exposures and then Slack and I’m like, “They must think I’m nuts.”
Aaron Cullers:
Well, my jokes have always been just for me anyway and so if other people find them funny, then that’s great, but they’re there for me. So that’s not a massive adjustment.
B2B Marketing that Engages Buyers
Cheri Keith:
There you go! You’ll be fine! Well, I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about just B2B marketing in general. You are working at a company that is very focused on MarTech and specifically, we’ll call it, alignment between sales and marketing trying to execute on account-based strategies. What led you to think about that? Why is that important for people to be considering right now with everything else, all these competing priorities that we were just talking about?
Aaron Cullers:
Yeah, well, it matches, I think the trends of what we all are kind of seeing globally as well, right? Which is kind of focus and efficiency. And we have to figure out how we do that in our day-to-day lives, in our professional environments. And I think when you kind of consider that landscape of B2B, it’s the same necessity in front of everyone, how do we focus? How do we do the things that are going to matter the most to the people that we need it to matter to? Right? That’s a spin on the old way of saying, “Right things, right people, right time.” But if we are looking at an environment where, and we’ve talked about it, face-to-face events and things like that, they’re not happening anymore. So how do we continue to find where our buyers are and engage them at their point of existence and their point of recreation or where they’re searching and truly deliver the messaging around our solutions as to how it solves their problems?
And I think what we do when we think about digital ABM for B2B and what Madison Logic can do specifically, that’s exactly what we do on a daily basis for our customers. How are we creating an integrated multi-channel experience for them that literally meets them on the field of play and gives them the opportunity to engage with our content in a variety of fashions across every stage that they are? And it changes.
That’s the cool thing, I think, about our solution is that we’re able to accelerate our buyer’s journeys because we are changing with them as they progress past their awareness, through their different stages, delivering up the different messaging materials at that point of play where it’s important. And it’s saying again, the most resonant messaging when it needs to. That to me is just a really great encapsulation of that trend for B2B as a whole. Let’s not waste our time and let’s focus on who we need to actually engage the most right now.
Signals and Calls-to-Action
Cheri Keith:
That’s great. I think the other thing is marketers cognitively know that there are signals being given off by buyers, but people really don’t know how to act on it. There’s so much process change that goes into actually being able to listen to what signals are and decide what the next best action would be, if you want to call it that. Or even just what you should be considering.
If I have one more question come my way about, “Is the demo the only call-to-action that I should be using in my webinars?” I’m like, “Well, no, if you just did this giant thought leadership webinar where you rolled in an industry analyst and you’re talking about concepts, what makes you think that your buyer’s journey is really going from that to a demo right away?” Actually having a call-to-action or that next item be aligned to what we know about the buyer, rather than either throwing the entire cornucopia of CTAs that you have at them or choosing the wrong one. How do you feel about that?
Aaron Cullers:
Yeah. That’s the science of it, right? They said there’d be no math, but there is the science in terms of what actually drives engagement, what drives to a conversion and what does a conversion even look like?
When you think about it, I had discussions internally recently about this concept of webinars, because it is such a primary way to deliver information and drive engagement and capture signals to your point. Is it enough? And how is that going to evolve to be more interactive and more tailored and be something of greater value?
That’s just the sort of thing that I think we all just need to start testing and figuring it out. What does that look like from a landscape perspective? Because I think you’re exactly right. What is the door that is the right signal? And how do we relate it back to that particular buyer, knowing that it’s going to be the most impactful and the timing’s going to be the warmest that it could possibly be? And maybe, for some, it may still continue to be demos.
And I get to see now in this role more personally and more intimately the infrastructure behind more of that, in terms of how do we deliver upon that and how do we make sure we can accommodate that from a capacity standpoint?
I mentioned priorities, right? So it’s fun to now, not only play in the science of what is it going to take for our buyers to be engaged and show us the right signals, but also our ability to even pick up the difference between the signal and the noise for all of that.
B2B Buzzwords
Cheri Keith:
You mentioned signal and noise. Are there any buzzwords now that you’re in the practitioner role again? I mean, we all had our pet peeves probably on the consultant side of it, but what’s top of mind? You have a great sense of humor with these things. What are you looking at now?
Aaron Cullers:
What are the buzzwords right now? Well, there’s the strategic buzzwords. I don’t know if these are gonna be funny. Now you’ve put the pressure on me like, “Dance for me, clown!” And I don’t have anything lined up.
The strategic buzzwords that we’re focused on a lot are “partnerships.” So how do we leverage our key strategic partnerships with organizations like LinkedIn and Merkel DWA and some others? How do we make sure that we’re leveraging that and really building, here’s a buzzword, “joint opportunities” for client success? That’s a big one for us. “Integration” is another key word that we are very focused on. We are able to seamlessly integrate our platform with a number of key partnerships with marketing automation platforms and CRMs. So how do we highlight the value of those integrations and drive them? So that’s pretty fancy for us.
Then I’ll get very, very tactical. Here’s a buzzword or an acronym that, being a consultant, I just hadn’t seen and done anything with them for a while “MDF funds.” Those are a real thing that we’re using and so on. Man, I hadn’t heard that acronym for a while, so it’s funny like, “Oh, that’s right. That’s how that works. That’s why we should leverage them.” So that’s another one that’s top of mind right now as well.
Cheri Keith:
Yeah. So clearly you’re enjoying the partnership side of being the head of marketing at a MarTech company.
Aaron Cullers:
Because that’s how we are going to grow and how we’re going to grow in an environment that needs to be on several channels and to be integrated. There’s that word again. But to be integrated with the folks and the partners that make the most sense for them.
Cheri Keith:
Well, I think the funny part of that is you, as companies need to be aligned, but usually the downfall of the integration isn’t the work that you and your partners have done. It’s the environment in which it’s being launched to customers and potentially the situation of the data in those systems. Or even just having the basic integrations in place. I think that ends up usually being the biggest downfall. And like, if you talk with someone and you’re like, “Alright, well, our system will integrate with this system.” They’re like, “Oh, well I have to go talk to sales ops about that and I don’t really want to do that. So we’re just going to go ahead and not do that.”
Aaron Cullers:
Yeah. It’s a different buyer and so it’s not only do we have to train ourselves internally on how to find and engage that member of the buying group and their role in the process, but also as a marketing function, support that with training and tools and materials that have highlighted those objections in the first place. How do we overcome those quickly and simply? There’s a whole ecosystem involved around that evolution and we’re certainly undergoing one ourselves. And we’re seeing that exact scenario as you laid it out.
B2B Trends and King Content
Cheri Keith:
Yeah. Definitely happens. All right. Well, we’ve been spending so much time trapped at home since you and I both haven’t been on airplanes in a while. Yes, your children are definitely younger than mine so you have a whole different set of concerns, but everyone has behaved so far through this interview. So I’m proud of the fams on that standpoint.
Are there any B2C trends that you’re watching or thinking about that might impact any technologies? Just since we’ve all been home a lot more, I feel like there’s been more getting up to speed on that media and having a little bit more screen time that isn’t on a plane anymore.
Aaron Cullers:
Yeah, no, I think the only thing, and again, because to your point, we are trapped in the house for the most part, right? The only thing that I’m seeing that I can relate from a B2C to B2B standpoint is here’s another old buzzword, Cheri, you’ll find funny “content being king.” Remember when that was on every t-shirt?
Cheri Keith:
Yeah! I thought it was just Tiger King? No? Content is King? Not Tiger King?
Aaron Cullers:
Well, content is queen around these parts, right? But it’s really funny that the consumption of content on the B2C side is out of control. I mean, Netflix just emailed my wife and said, “We’re making it as fast as we can. Sorry, please wait for it. We’re doing the best we can to give you more content.” Cause she’s seen it all at this point.
That consumption, I think from the B2B side is pretty similar, right? We’ve got time to consume. We’ve got time to do our digging and engage with things that are going to help us solve our problems. So where is it? And give us more and make it bigger and better than the last piece of content that we had. Because again, we’ve seen it.
You and I have done this dance for a number of years. I kind of feel like we can throw those catchy funny, old slogans back at you. Because we’ve heard them all, right? And everyone in B2B has. So now it’s about telling us something new and different and doing it in a much more different and engaging way because we’re just consuming like never before.
It’s a funny thing because today is probably a pretty big news day, depending upon when we actually are posting this particular podcast interview. There is a lot going on in the news. If you think about it, we’re having to deal with more information at one time than probably any other generation in history. Just the speed at which it’s coming out and the cycles and the speed at which those have accelerated as far as how we’re consuming information and where it is at our fingertips.
That is echoed throughout everything. B2C. B2B. You name it. It’s impressive and also exhausting at the same time. So how we keep up with that and B2B is going to be where the challenge lies in the next couple of years.
Cheri Keith:
Right? What’s the new thing that people are saying now? We’re living at work. There isn’t a lot of escape from it. I mean, we both leave our home offices, but our phone is there still there.
Aaron Cullers:
Yeah.
Cheri Keith:
You’ve reached the end of Netflix. Like have you reached the end of the B2B content yet? Probably not. I guess it gets back to changes have to happen in the way that we’re creating the content and compiling it so that it’s not so much redoing it all the time, but is it a repurpose? Is it at least bite-sized?
I am shocked when I see some data that shows that people generally will stay on that 60-minute-long webinar for 56 minutes or 54 minutes. It only dropped two minutes through COVID. That’s kind of surprising to me.
I think shorter form is where people are going. People will stay on for good content. With so much going on now and everything being digital now, I think we’re going to see, or we’re already seeing, people have a shorter attention span for stuff that isn’t good. The bar has been raised on a lot of digital experiences and digital content so now people are very quick to opt out of something that’s not a good experience because they know they can go find a better experience elsewhere. There’s now competition for it, for our attention more so than before.
Aaron Cullers:
Get in, get out, right? What’s digestible? What’s fun sized as far as the content is concerned? Absolutely.
Peloton Webinars and Brands on TikTok
Cheri Keith:
Yeah. So my big idea, we’re going to launch it here. Everyone has bought a Peloton I feel like. Don’t you think? Through COVID?
Aaron Cullers:
I was on a call earlier where there were two different zoom windows with Pelotons in the background. So yeah, you’re on to something.
Cheri Keith:
Oh, yes! Yeah. That is the new trend. The new version of men on dating sites with fish as their profile photos is having Pelotons in your background, I think. I do not have one, but I’m probably going to get one soon because winter is upon us, up in New Hampshire and it’s going to be miserable. I’m like, “All right, everyone’s on Peloton. What if we started like having webinars via Peloton?
Aaron Cullers:
Yeah, you can try it.
Cheri Keith:
I need to work out and I need to do the research. Come on!
Aaron Cullers:
It’s super motivating for one.
New Speaker:
I’m a former spin instructor. I could do this! Why have I not been hired to do this yet?
Aaron Cullers:
Well, it’s the same as that announcement around Oracle getting more involved with TikTok. Everyone thinks it’s funny now, but wait until the younger generation is served up ads for marketing automation platforms, right? It’s not quite as exciting.
Cheri Keith:
Hahaha. Yeah.
Aaron Cullers:
There’s no financial management dance trend that’s probably going to spring out of that. So, you’re welcome to explore it.
Cheri Keith:
I mean, my daughter is on TikTok. I mean, it’s very limited. It’s a private account. It is her keeping her content as king, her captive audience of her six friends who are also allowed to have TikTok doing the same dance over and over again. But yeah, maybe they’ll bust out an Eloqua dance at some point in time. I’m convinced that I am the star of her Tiktok though. I’ll always be in the background cleaning something, doing something, and she’s doing this ridiculous dance. And then there I am.
Aaron Cullers:
I just think once the brands show up on any platform then people move on. And then that’s a challenge too. It feels like now we’re constantly chasing too. To try to stay ahead of it as opposed to being the late adopters for that sort of a platform and a channel.
Cheri Keith:
Yeah. So are we going to see Madison Logic integrate with TikTok now? Is that what we’re hearing?
Aaron Cullers:
It’s gotta be whatever’s next. It’s gotta be whatever it is after the tic-tacs and TikToks of the world. I call it a tic-tac on purpose. I think it’s funny. No one else has laughed yet. So thanks for that. I appreciate it.
Cheri Keith:
No, I love it. I mean, I’m a [blip]
Aaron Cullers:
[blip] I’m not of that generation anymore and I’m just trying. That’s how I cope. Best defense is a good offense.
Challenges to Overcome and Q4 Priorities
Cheri Keith:
No, I laugh of course, because Bill Belichick, when he went off about social media, like “Face Space” and commenting on all the different things. So you know how to hit the funny bone. Alright. Last question. What is a challenge you’re looking to overcome? We’re entering Q4, what’s the big thing that you’re thinking about doing other than getting up to speed? What’s your priority?
Aaron Cullers:
Yeah, I have a number of them and the first one, not to sound flippant or funny, but prioritizing priorities. And so how do we determine, as I said a little bit earlier, what are the things that are going to be impactful now and additive? So what’s not distracting in the fourth quarter of a very busy year that has been bizarre, to say the least, right? How do we make sure that we are providing support from the marketing standpoint to our organization and not being disruptive or confusing with what we’re saying? So that’s the first one. How do we prioritize and do those things?
And then for me though, again, what’s really fun is going back into a head of marketing and practitioner role in general, is building the marketing organization within the company again. Redefining it, re-imagining it whatever you have, whatever your descriptive adjectives should be. Because this is a team and a company that has performed really, really well this year. We have been breaking records over the past several months, as far as our revenue is concerned. The momentum feels strong.
We’ve done that with a nominal amount of marketing involvement. It’s been a completely pared down team until my arrival and to sort of look at that scenario and think, “Okay, if we can set the foundation for marketing as a team within the company, build it as a revenue generating engine for our team, just imagine how we can support and drive incremental value and revenue next year.” So to see that as that opportunity to build a team and get our priorities straight going into next year is super exciting. There are major wins, I think, kind of on the table there for sure.
The other big thing that is our priority is sales enablement just as a general rule. I don’t think that I want to say that marketing is a service org to sales because we are straight up a partner to our sales organization. It ultimately comes down to how can we enable that team to know what they’re saying about our solution? Because we’ve talked about what the buyers want to hear to help solve their problems, and then providing them the tools and materials to help do that. Now there’s an underlying layer of processes and that foundational piece that makes that engine run, right? It makes that fancy car run, but knowing where to drive it and who’s going to get behind the wheel, to carry that analogy all the way through. That’s the main focus I’ve got over the course of the next quarter. And again, getting to 2021 with the right team now rebuilt, redefined, and literally ready to just rock and roll and start executing next year and make things happen.
Cheri Keith:
That’s awesome. I mean, it sounds like a perfect opportunity for you to take on that practitioner role again, but also be able to build. And I feel like sometimes when I talk to people that are making that shift from, whether it be consultant to in-house, in-house to consultant, it’s some of the biggest challenges people have other than acclimation is trying to do it the way that someone else had it before them. But you obviously have the runway to be able to build it out, and that’s why they hired you because they know that you can do that. So that’s great.
Aaron Cullers:
Yeah. I’m excited to be in the role. I’m looking forward to where we’re going. The sooner I can adapt to some of those back-to-the-real-world type changes, I think the better off we’ll all be, which is going to be great.
Cheri Keith:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Aaron. I know I’ve enjoyed our time together. I am so sure the audience will love the grenade and car analogies that you’ve shared with us. So thank you for your sense of humor and your expertise. This has been wonderful. Thank you to the CMO Confessions audience for tuning in.
Aaron Cullers:
Thank you, Cheri. I appreciate the time.