AMA: Cloudflare Head of Digital Marketing, Nash Haywood on Channel Mix

Stepping into a new role as a Demand Gen leader requires a strong  understanding of the core business model, go-to-market strategy and revenue process, first and foremost.  Here are the top 4 things I would focus on (in addition to understanding the business) as quickly as possible: Understand business goals and link them to your initial marketing plan: The first step should be understanding the overall business and marketing goals in terms of leads, signup, opportunities, pipeline, etc. Speak w ...Read More

Industry event, associations and other organizations that already support your market are typically very interested in working with new brands. Insights on where your market goes to get additional industry information / current events can be found by simply sending a simple survey (with an incentive!), asking your Customer Advisory Board or by having your CSMs or AEs ask customers of various sizes. Additionally, if you buyer is not present on digital channels, you may want to build an account li ...Read More

I've found that using a double-funnel approach to be one of the best ways to balance -- it helps align your team on goals, outcomes and other critical components to growth. The Double Funnel approach focuses on both high-value accounts and always-on marketing channels, and the combination helps improve overall sales and marketing performance. Aligning to key performance metrics with this approach is key as there are significant changes in outputs when transitioning from a lead-gen focus to an ac ...Read More

B2B marketers should pay close attention to third-party directories. These platforms provide an excellent opportunity for prospects to discover your products or services, gain trust from unbiased user reviews, and, ultimately, assist in the decision-making process.  Platforms like G2, TrustRadius, Capterra, PeerInsights and other directories can be very influential in a potential customer's consideration of products in a very specific field or industry.  Actively managing your presence on all th ...Read More

Planning for and setting channel-specific goals in B2B is complex due to most channels being used at multiple stages of the funnel, creating a complexity in planning how to invest and evaluate performance. I’ve found these things to be most helpful when setting channel-specific goals across different types of teams, funnel stages and business models: Only set goals that align teams cross-functionally and tie to the true key business objectives - Before setting channel-specific goals, it's essent ...Read More

Generally, adding as much spend to the lower portion of the marketing funnel (aka demand capture) will typically result in high ROI on paper but sacrifices the upside effective brand marketing provides. Typically I recommend maximizing paid and organic search budget to capture all in-market buyers (product interest searches) and building a marketing funnel to convert it. Understanding the total number of search impressions (demand) and your ideal customer profile (unique companies and people wit ...Read More

Offline channels are a good way to standout and diversify your marketing mix. I've found that direct mail is a great way to get started and can be core to an effective and personalized 1:1 or 1:few ABM strategy, especially if you have an interesting direct mail piece. Here's a blog post from Sendoso with a few dozen examples for direct mail ideas to add into your campaigns. Direct mail is much easier to tie to revenue within a typical demand gen organization. For OOH like billboards or street si ...Read More