MarTech Interview with Gautam Mehandru, CMO at Illumio

Gautam Mehandru, CMO at Illumio talks about the factors modern marketers need to prioritize on to drive revenue and growth:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Gautam. Tell us about your marketing journey so far and more about your time at Illumio – what are you looking forward to as the brand’s new CMO?

I’ve been in the tech industry for over 20 years, operating in both large-scale publicly traded companies as well as small venture backed pre-IPO ones. Although I’ve spent the majority of that time in marketing, I have worn a few different hats over the years — from product management to business development to channel sales. I have also been a product marketer for a number of years and that’s helped me achieve a strong foundational understanding of business fundamentals. It’s also taught me how to orchestrate a strong go-to-market motion that drives growth. I joined Illumio almost 2 years ago, from another cybersecurity company (Tanium), to run product and technical marketing, and soon added the demand generation function to my remit. About 6 months ago, I began leading marketing overall as the SVP of Marketing, and now as CMO. So, of course, I jumped in with both feet and have thoroughly enjoyed the ride thus far!

It is such an interesting time to lead any function. But as the marketing leader of a cybersecurity company, especially at a time where we face tough macroeconomic conditions, my north star remains the same – driving revenue. We have a strong culture of commitment to our customers at Illumio. It’s something I’m very proud of and I very much look forward to continuing. We believe that Illumio’s Zero Trust Segmentation platform is designed to deliver meaningful results for businesses of all sizes, and the data (and YoY business growth) shows that we deliver.

For brands (and maybe even closer home at Illumio) who are looking at reshaping their core marketing practices and strategies for 2023, what tips and best practices would you share?

One of the biggest challenges for marketers in 2023 is how to deliver enough pipeline in an uncertain macroeconomic environment. For me and for us at Illumio, it goes back to the fundamentals – the right strategy, the right process, and the right tools will allow you to build and execute a strong go-to-market motion. Ultimately, at its core, all marketing strategy and go-to-market boils down to delivering the right message to the right buyer(s). Illumio plays in a red-hot (thus crowded) cybersecurity space, so the right message for us stems from strong positioning. And make no mistake, positioning is strategy! It’s how you think about where you fit in a market and the context we set for our customers by creating benefit associations in their minds.

Then, you should develop messaging using positioning statements. I strongly encourage marketers to partner with sales before rolling out new messaging. Next, discipline around process and leveraging the right tools helps identify the right segment, the right personas, and ultimately, the right buyers to deliver that message to. Doing this right, consistently, allows you to not only create demand but also capture it, which is essential to driving revenue growth in any organization.

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We’d love to hear about some of the martech you’ve often relied on to drive growth and what martech best practices you feel more marketers today need to focus on to extract the best of the tools they use?

I’ve had the opportunity to work with a variety of martech tools like marketing automation, customer relationship management, social media management, data analytics, search engine optimization, etc., to drive growth. In today’s economy, it’s no surprise that marketers need to focus on exploring the best ways to leverage the existing martech stack to its full potential.

The best marketers (marketing ops leaders in this case) are the ones that focus foremost on identifying redundant or underutilized tools to improve the efficiency of the entire martech stack. Marketing ops leaders see the big picture and can convert insight into action by integrating tools to create a seamless flow of data.

From an optimization perspective, it’s critical to establish clear processes and workflows for each tool to streamline marketing operations, and to ensure the team has the skills and knowledge necessary to use the tools effectively. Lastly, setting up appropriate KPIs, and tracking the impact and performance of the martech stack against them, will help marketing teams achieve better results in a challenging macroeconomic environment.

When it comes to the role of the B2B CMO – how are you seeing that change in today’s time and what predictions do you have for the future state and standards for a typical CMO?

It’s an exciting time to be a B2B CMO. The role continues to evolve, with shifts stemming largely from the changing needs and behaviors of customers. CMOs need to and are adopting a more strategic stance within the company’s C-suite. The CMO role has the most complete and most overarching view of the market and the customer. With data and analytics, CMOs can understand the entire customer journey and can partner with other C-suite members on a more strategic level to align with other business and stakeholders’ objectives.

Looking ahead, I see CMOs facing greater expectations than their predecessors did. A successful CMO will bring a high growth mindset and use both creative skills and data-driven intelligence to get a deep understanding of the customer to drive the business forward. More and more, B2B CMOs now use pipeline and revenue as their ultimate north star, and that will continue.

I firmly believe that while the CRO owns the sales department, selling is a process and a group effort –thus everyone has a role in selling. This means that taking the time to understand the market, the product, and the customer will all continue to be critical drivers for the CMO and other marketers. Another area that I predict CMOs will focus more on is lifetime value (LTV) metrics, in addition to more near-term metrics like net new business. Keeping the current customers happy, engaged, and growing is a must for businesses to balance short-term and long-term success.

Can you talk about five basic must-have skills that you feel every modern-day marketer and especially CMO should have to drive pipeline and business ROI?

While there isn’t necessarily a universally accepted list of must-have skills for modern marketers, I can share my own list of essential traits and capabilities (based on my experiences and learnings over the years) that have made me a better marketer:

1. Analytical Skills: Data is at the heart of modern marketing and marketers need to be able to analyze and interpret data to make informed business decisions.
2. Communication Skills: Marketers need to be able to tell stories internally and externally. They must articulate their ideas clearly and persuasively and adapt their communication style to different audiences.
3. Bias to Action: Sense of urgency and the ability to move fast is another must-have skill in today’s fast paced and competitive market. It allows marketers to be more responsive and/or proactive and can give the business a greater competitive advantage.
4. Ability to Think Strategically: To drive business ROI, CMOs need a strategic mindset and the ability to link marketing goals to the overarching business strategy. Applying critical thinking to the market, the customers, the competition and then developing a marketing strategy to achieve business objectives is a must-have skill.
5. Courage and Adaptability: The market landscape is constantly evolving and CMOs need to adapt to changes in technology, market trends, customer behavior and more. Also, CMOs must possess the courage and willingness to challenge the status quo and experiment with new approaches – which can often lead to breakthrough ideas that can drive even greater business growth.

A few common misconceptions about the modern state of B2B marketing you’d like to dispel?

There is a common misconception that marketing is an art or a science, and folks seem to over-rotate on one view or another. Some of the most successful marketing departments have teams composed of both right-brain marketers and left-brain marketers. You absolutely need both skill sets to innovate and grow strategically as a marketing organization, and the perfect marketing strategy blends both these artistic and scientific attributes into one integrated function.

Also, all too often, marketing is perceived as owning tactical functions like lead generation or content creation, or worse – like PowerPoint creators. The reality is that B2B marketing is a strategic and integrated function that ultimately drives growth for any organization. It’s about understanding the market and the market opportunity, creating the positioning and the messaging, and orchestrating a go-to-market that enables sales teams to hit their targets. All while building towards the company’s long-term vision and goals. The magic of integrated marketing happens when brand, product marketing, demand gen, communications, and operations all come together to achieve the above outcomes and propel the business forward.

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Illumio is a Zero Trust Segmentation company, stops breaches from spreading across the hybrid attack surface.

Gautam Mehandru is CMO at Illumio