Keynote: Marketing to Win 

Speaker: Jeffrey Hayzlett, Radio Host, C-Suite TV

Marketing-driven companies approach their business strategy differently: they tend to be customer-centric more than technology or product-centric, and grow their companies with the customer problem in mind.

From understanding the customer need through research, to defining the product or offering through firsthand feedback, to promotions and communications to the target audience in a personalized and measured manner, to onboarding and supporting the customer, to making them delighted, and finally, to converting them into advocates, marketing-driven companies use data to inform the full lifecycle of the customer. And each day, these companies are continuing to evolve in an agile manner to improve upon the different stages of the customer lifecycle and build a successful brand.

When taking a holistic and data-driven approach with the customer in mind, it’s no surprise that marketing-driven companies win more than others — and this keynote will explore how marketing can ultimately help create that winning formula for your enterprise.

Panel: Accelerating Growth With Your Customer's Voice 

Speakers: Vinay Bhagat Founder & CEO, TrustRadius, Chandar Pattabhiram, CMO Coupa Software, Grant Halloran, CMO MapD, Allison Pickens, Chief Customer Officer, Gainsight

It's time to face an inconvenient truth: wary of marketing messages and sales spin, B2B buyers are increasingly turning to peers as their most trusted resource in the purchasing process.

With the rise of review sites, your users are already sharing insights and telling your story in their own words. And your prospects are listening, whether or not you tap into the conversation. Customer-centric marketing teams who harness the authentic voice of their customers in their own channels are seeing amazing results, from influencing the buyer’s journey and lifting conversion to enabling sales and informing product strategy.

Hear directly from three​​ ​executives​: Grant Halloran, CMO of MapD and ex-CMO of Anaplan, Chandar Pattabhiram, CMO of Coupa Software and ex-CMO Marketo​ ​​and Allison Pickens, Chief Customer Officer Gainsight, ​on why customer voice is a key strategic initiative for today’s marketing executives. Moderated by TrustRadius CEO Vinay Bhagat, this fireside chat will conclude with a Q&A session so participants can engage directly with the panelists.

Panel: Go-to-market/Life cycle marketing

Speakers: Christina Ellwood, Moderator; Rene Bonvanie; David Hsieh; Richard Heitmann

How does go-to-market strategy vary for different business models and how can a marketing professional decide on investments at all stages of the lifecycle -- including acquisition, adoption, cross-sell, retention, and advocacy? We’ll dig into the role of partnerships and channel for various business models, whether or not an entrepreneur or company should take investments from strategic partners with go-to-market being the primary focus, how sales/marketing investment ratios vary at different stages of growth, and whether it is advantageous to engage in a few deep customer engagements vs narrow customer engagements early on in the cycle.

Panel: Marketing and Technology

Speakers: Nick Edouard; Alix Hart; David Hsu

This panel will discuss the impact of technology on marketing, including the latest technical platform/innovations that are influencing marketing and areas of tech investment in sales and marketing. We’ll also delve into issues such as technology’s impact on sales cycle, varying business models (e.g. SaaS vs B2B software vs B2C offerings) requiring different approach to technology in sales and marketing, and impact of technology on marketing skills, organizational structure, and processes at the enterprise.

Perspective: AI for Marketing

Speaker: John Ellet

Predictive marketing is all about getting a better ROI by gauging the interest of a prospect and serving the appropriate messaging/offering based on the predictive data set. Smart algorithms can help everything from sending the right messaging, to prioritizing the right feature set, to getting the pricing right, to communicating the most relevant promotions or discounts at the right time.

There’s no question that with better AI, the ROI for marketing can be enhanced substantially, and this session will explore how!

Perspective: RevOps

Speaker: Marko Savic

Driving full lifecycle revenue by closing the gap between Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success
Maximizing revenue at every stage of the customer lifecycle requires expanding marketing’s charter beyond acquisition. Marko Savic dived deeply into the question of how to operationalize lifecycle marketing by interviewing over 100 B2B marketing leaders. The result is the Revenue Operations Framework. It is a seminal work that identifies the four pillars of RevOps – Operations, Enablement, Insights, and Tools and details how CMOs can apply the framework to their business.

Panel: Marketing as a Revenue Driver

Speakers: Heidi Bullock, Moderator; Sydney Sloan; Rick Shultz; Steven Wastie

More than 60% of a buyer’s journey is already completed before the prospect ever engages with the sales team. Your potential customers have become savvy researchers and buyers!

This panel will address how marketing is playing an ever-increasing role in buying behavior and influencing company revenue. That is even more pronounced when thinking about a SaaS model: the company may have no sales resources — selling everything on their website — everything the prospects need to know (from product info, competitor information, pricing, references and recommendations from other users) — is already readily available. That is all thanks to marketing, which is playing a larger role in not just top-of-funnel activities like driving awareness and creating demand, but is influencing majority of the total sales funnel.

And once a customer is on board, customer advocacy plays an important role — where marketing is critical to creating and nurturing customer advocates that help upsell and cross-sell within the enterprise. It’s also key to influencing the buying decisions of prospects in other enterprises. In addition, marketing is investing in many tools that give it the visibility and the ability to influence the buyer journey. In this closing panel, you’ll hear about marketing’s direct impact to your bottom line.