MarTech Interview with Guy Marion, Chief Marketing Officer at Chargebee

Guy Marion, Chief Marketing Officer at Chargebee weighs in on the common myths surrounding B2B marketing:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Guy, tell us about yourself and your marketing journey through the years, we’d love to hear about your time as CMO at Chargebee.

I have spent more than 15 years leading marketing, sales, and product teams within VC-backed early & mid-stage SaaS startups ($0M – $150M) and in public SaaS enterprises. Along the way, I have been fortunate enough to work with and mentor early career team members through to rising stars and veteran leaders – and am passionate in general about achieving the impossible with mission-driven teams.

Prior to joining Chargebee, I was the founder and CEO of Brightback, which was acquired by Chargebee in 2022 and became Chargebee Retention. After serving as GM of Chargebee Retention, I was recently appointed CMO of Chargebee, where my goal is to expand and enhance our global customer base and partner ecosystem, ensuring that Chargebee remains the leading revenue growth management platform for subscription businesses.

Previously, I held the role of CMO at Autopilot, a marketing automation platform, where I played a pivotal role in generating millions in revenue and achieving exponential user acquisition. I served as the Head of Online Sales at Zendesk, which focused on acquiring, growing, and retaining our web customers, and before that ran marketing and Go to Market for the Cloud Services at CollabNet Inc.

What are some common myths surrounding the role of the typical B2B CMO you’d like to dispel in today’s conversation?

One common myth is that the CMO is only focused on leads and pipeline targets. However, today’s CMO is responsible for sourcing and influencing revenue through the full customer lifecycle, from awareness generation to sales process to growth and retention

Another common myth is that (public) CMOs are only concerned with short-term results. The reality is I am not only focused on achieving short-term goals within the context of a long-term, strategic point of view. I need to develop marketing strategies that deliver sustainable revenue growth over time while building and nurturing customer and partner relationships, defining a market direction and vision for our customer-facing teams, and remaining in lockstep with our product and executive teams.

Another is that CMOs are isolated from other business functions. At Chargebee, I work hand-in-hand with different departments, including our Revenue and Product orgs, to achieve business goals. As Marketing is a team sport, a successful CMO should always be a team player to align marketing objectives with broader business goals.

Finally, a common myth is that marketing is only focused on acquisition – when in reality today’s online consumer and B2B buyer is deeply educated by the time they engage a vendor, and expect a consistent experience from first touch through to eventual departure as a long-term customer. Marketing’s role is to define the buyer AND post-sale customer journey, then develop the targeting and personalized channels to drive a cohesive customer experience that solves the customers’ more critical needs & challenges.

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For B2B CMOs and marketing leaders of today, as they drive efforts through tough global markets, what are some of the five fundamentals you feel they should follow more of?

There are several fundamentals that marketing leaders should follow to drive their efforts through tough global markets. Here are some of them:

Monitoring your performance means measuring the right cocktail of metrics, which must include sourced and influenced revenue, funnel conversion, online/offline engagement, retention rates, and customer satisfaction. By tracking your results and making data-driven decisions, you can optimize your campaigns and achieve better results over time.

Grow brand awareness: Investing in building brand awareness is a critical strategy for any business that wants to achieve sustainable growth and long-term success. By consistently communicating the unique value that your brand provides, you can attract and retain customers, increase brand loyalty, and ultimately drive revenue and profitability.

Be agile and adaptable: In a rapidly changing market, it is crucial to be agile and adaptable in your marketing efforts. You need to be able to pivot quickly to respond to changes in the market and adjust your marketing strategies accordingly.

Leverage technology: Technology can help you streamline your marketing efforts, improve your targeting, and measure your results. By leveraging marketing automation, data analytics, and other tools, you can optimize your campaigns and achieve better ROI.

Invest in content and customer marketing: Content marketing is an effective way to build brand awareness, establish thought leadership, and generate leads. By creating high-quality content that educates and engages your target audience, you can differentiate your brand and position yourself as a trusted advisor.

We’d love to hear about some of the core marketing processes/strategies (eg: ABM) and martech that you pursue to drive your marketing goals or those you’ve often relied on through the years?

• ABM – targeted outbound into specifically designed market segments. For example, we targeted food e-commerce companies, used a lighthouse customer, developed unique and proprietary content (using performance benchmarks surfaced from our products), then used domain-targeted advertising and LinkedIn outreach to connect with title-matched prospects in a repeatable fashion
• Market Research: Conducting market research helps to understand customer behavior, competitors, industry trends, and new opportunities. One way I have done this is by developing State of Industry benchmark reports through independent research to help drive awareness and leads, as well as bring context to our thought leadership and marketing efforts.
• Brand Positioning: Developing a unique brand positioning helps to differentiate your brand from competitors and establish a clear value proposition that resonates with your target audience. This is a multi-step process including triangulating the gap in the market and the preferences of your target audience, your team’s culture and values and product differentiators including how they appeal to the target buyer, to develop a cohesive brand narrative to be used across all channels.
• Content Marketing: Creating high-quality, valuable content that educates and engages your target audience, mapped to the above-mentioned buying cycle. The best way to start prioritizing content is to survey current customers to learn more about their preferences and what they want to learn to better do their jobs coupled tightly with lifecycle marketing and input from your sales teams (i.e.: what are they repeatedly hearing from prospects).
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM): A CRM system helps to manage customer interactions and relationships effectively, track customer behavior, and personalize customer experiences to improve retention rates.
• Marketing Automation: Automating repetitive marketing tasks, such as email campaigns, social media posts, and lead nurturing, helps to save time and resources while improving efficiency and scalability.
• Analytics and Reporting: Measuring and analyzing marketing data using analytics tools helps to understand the effectiveness of marketing efforts, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions.

Take us through some of the top martech SaaS trends that you feel will dominate B2B martech?

• Personalization is a must-have: B2B martech is increasingly focusing on delivering personalized experiences throughout the customer journey. Marketers are leveraging technologies to create targeted content, recommend relevant products, and provide tailored interactions to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Predictive Analytics: As the martech landscape becomes more sophisticated, marketers are placing greater emphasis on predictive analytics and attribution models to qualify existing leads, channels and customer segments, discover new audiences, predict future revenue impact, and identify target customers to upsell and cross-sell. Accurate measurement of marketing efforts and ROI allows businesses to optimize campaigns, allocate resources effectively, and make data-driven decisions.
• AI and Automation: Leveraging open-source and automation tools will become table stakes for businesses in all industries. At a time when efficiency is critical, Martech SaaS solutions that offer automation features, such as lead nurturing and email marketing, will be essential for businesses that want to stay ahead of the competition while optimizing investments.A few obvious examples include ad copy testing, email copywriting, blog/content acceleration, customer research and target list development. The winners in this space will be those that can develop unique insights, even with the support of a tool like ChatGPT, by asking directed questions and utilizing strong editing as opposed to copy/pasting standard results.

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Chargebee is a leading Revenue Growth Management (RGM) platform for subscription businesses of all sizes.

Guy Marion is the Chief Marketing Officer at Chargebee.