Scaling Up

Randy Brown, Chief Marketing Officer at Chief Outsiders and Founder and CEO of Live-Stream Interchange, knows a lot about driving organic business growth through marketing. He shared his excitement and passion for marketing with Tim Maitland. “The focus for so long has been on the discretionary spend component of marketing, which is the marketing budget and all of the stuff we see every day, especially the traditional advertising and PR and tradeshows and events and things like that,” Brown said. “But when you actually look at the total upstream through downstream activities that add value in the business and drive value creation, there are a lot of extremely important processes in there that are not necessarily consuming discretionary marketing spend.” Brown and his two businesses help companies realize the value in those processes, so they make the most of their marketing opportunities without sacrificing budget. One formula Brown believes in is growth gears, which he calls the three Gs.“That first gear is insights,” Brown said.This linear process begins with a company understanding its markets, customers, and its competition. Once the company knows what space to operate in, the formulation of the best strategy can commence. “We then move to the second gear, which is strategy development,” Brown said. “This is developing the strategy based on those strategic hypotheses that you developed in the insights gear. The deliverable in this gear is to identify the top three to five growth levers that the whole organization will rally around and driving the market around a three-year strategic plan.”The final gear is execution. And this last step is focused on the organization aligning, funding and resourcing all the marketing activities to drive sales effectiveness.

When it comes to scaling up, there are often a lot of questions around the idea. Whether you are a marketing director or a CEO, some wonder how or when to scale. Then you have to get your teams on board to buy into an initiative or company growth.On this episode of Scaling Up, Host Tim Maitland talked with Andy McNeill, President and CEO of Denali Water Solutions, a residuals and biosolids management company that offers services throughout the west coast and the southern United States. They provide a broad range of services to wastewater and water treatment plants both, municipal and industrial, to provide operations, cleanouts, and disposal for digestion, dewatering, pits, tanks, and lagoons.Denali has its hands in a lot of different pots. McNeill is tasked with growing each of these market segments and leads massive, massive enterprise-scale every day. Before working at Denali, Andy was the CEO of Terra Renewal and its subsidiaries. He grew Terra from a small residuals company to the 23rd largest waste company in the US. He believes in the growth in this industry. “In terms of being able to scale, I believe there's an opportunity in the United States to create a business, a large business, that capitalizes on the leverage of the ways we can dispose of various waste streams,” McNeill said.One of the most important aspects to consider when scaling is ensuring the proper capital structure. Businesses need to be in a position to support the growth they think they can get. Some of that growth is organic, and some are acquisitive, but it's crucial to have strategic plans on both fronts.

Tracking content ROI is essential for any marketer. It can sometimes be challenging or require a fresh perspective, but it's possible and repeatable. One segment of content is owned media channels—live virtual events, on-demand webinars, and podcasts. So, how can marketers master metrics for this type of content? That's the discussion on Scaling Up. Host Tim Maitland spoke with TC Riley, Senior Director of Information Services at MarketScale and data aficionado, on how to do it well.“For those investing in these media channels, they are trying to build a community, not an audience. That means they are engaging, which may not be as tangible to track as plays or views. There is an owned media gray area of how to track this,” Riley said.Measuring owned media isn't unlike search engine marketing, content marketing, or other traditional inbound marketing strategies. Marketers have a set path for what is the ROI. That data is available in media channels; it's just in different forms.“For those investing in these media channels, they are trying to build a community, not an audience.” -Thomas RileyOwned media can also continue to complement live events as they resume. “You can do both, live going live from the trade show to expand audience and engagement,” Riley said.“How many plays is an oversimplification of what you're doing. Owned media can be a lead machine with an information wall that allows you to capture information and know who is engaging with your content,” Riley explained.When defining KPIs for owned media, Riley described three layers. First is the general metric, then what the more experienced marketer would look at, and finally, the creative person. “For general, it would be the number of plays. One step further is those registrations, and the creative KPI is the comments, looking at who is in the ecosystem you're building.”

Growth is an important aspect, no matter the industry. As a B2B company, companies need to invest time to grow. For too long, companies have tried to be generalists and appease as many markets as possible. But, often, companies can benefit from going niche and focusing on the things where they excel.On this episode of Scaling Up, Host Tim Maitland, Chief Revenue Officer Marketscale, talked with David Richardson, Partner at R Squared Group, about how B2B companies can position their brand for growth."It's taking off like a rocketship. It's kind of exciting, we're going to the moon, but everything on the inside is rattling." -David RichardsonRichardson's background is helping brands reposition themselves in the B2B Space, where he started in the tradeshow industry. Here he learned how to drive sales and leads while communicating directly with the folks buying from him. After working for a few businesses and startups, he headed into the agency world in Dallas.He launched R Squared Group, a growth consulting firm that focuses on B2B companies. "It's taking off like a rocketship," Richardson said. "It's kind of exciting, we're going to the moon, but everything on the inside is rattling."While Richardson has worked in agencies, he has a disdain for ones that call themselves full-service. "Full-service equals full of shit," Richardson said. He elaborated that this means an agency is a generalist and doesn't specialize in any one area. The companies that do this end up not being experts in most areas, which doesn't allow them to expand upon what sets them apart.

How are B2B companies handling the next phase of digital transformation when it comes to owned content channels? Let's find out, as host Tim Maitland talked with Mike McCalley, VP at Vixxo, a facilities management company. McCalley has a long career in marketing leadership, working for GE, Flowserve and CECO Environmental.

Tim Maitland knows a thing or two about leading revnue teams as the Chief Revenue Officer at at MarketScale. But now he's on the hunt to speak with experts across B2B as they share their stories, and insights as leaders at the forefront of their industry.On the debut episode of “Scaling Up,” which will feature Maitland's conversations with these innovators and industry leaders, Maitland invited MarketScale's Vice President of Production Josh Brummett onto the show to find out how video can help take sales to new heights.The first step, Brummett said, is a simple one – you have to produce good video content to have it result in true sales enablement.“I will say – ads are dead,” Brummett said. “If you're making an ad-type video and trying to make a commercial to really just push what your product is immediately, people are going to get turned off by that. … What you really have to do is be able to tell a story.”The central elements of any good narrative – key players, a conflict and a resolution – need to be present in your video content. People want products that they can relate to and that understand their unique challenges, then work to solve them,When that central goal is accomplished, videos become a key tool in the salesperson's toolbox for exactly that reason. When salespeople transition from pushing products and coming across as concerned with the bottom line to being able to meet potential customers where they are and exhibit how the product can solve their problems, real growth and relationships happen.Add in live broadcast, roundtable discussions, asynchronously record content and more to deal with continued fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, and you've got a well-rounded, powerful strategy for leveraging video to tell your brand's story.