The Marketing Hero Podcast

Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) platforms have come a long way from the days of spreadsheet formulas. In this conversation, host Chris Strom and RevOps strategist Joanne Cheng unpack where CPQ fits in a modern go-to-market stack, the problems it actually solves, and how new developments, such as AI-driven guidance, usage-basedbilling, and low-code extensibility, are reshaping the space.Listen in for:A clear-spoken CPQ primer: what it is, what it isn't, and the tipping points that signal it's time to adopt.Real-world patterns that demand more than manual quoting—think multi-currency deals, complex product bundles, or fast-moving self-serve funnels.Emerging trends for 2025, from composable quote-to-cash architectures to the rise of predictive discount recommendations.Candid lessons from recent rollouts—what sped things up, what slowed things down, and how alignment between the involved stakeholders make or break success.A myth-busting round (yes, spreadsheets can still play a supporting role).Whether you're revenue-ops-curious or knee-deep in a CPQevaluation, this episode offers a balanced, jargon-light look at the tech and the tactics behind smoother quoting flows.Grab your headphones, hit play, and enjoy the chat!

In this episode of the RevOps Hero Podcast, host Chris Strom sits down with Jacqueline Freedman of Monarch Advisory Partners and former Marketing Ops leader at Grammarly and WeWork, to dive deep into the strategy, planning, and execution of in-person events as part of your marketing operations.Together, they unpack:✅ Why in-person events are regaining importance in today's remote-first world✅ How to align sales and marketing before, during, and after your event✅ What types of events (from CABs to fireside chats) work best and why✅ Tools and tech stacks for tracking attendance and engagement✅ How to define success through metrics like pipeline generation and incremental impact✅ Pro tips on campaign setup, reporting, and segmentation in systems like Salesforce and HubSpot✅ What not to do in post-event follow-up (hint: don't blast your attendee list to sales)Whether you're planning your first executive dinner or scaling a multi-city roadshow, this episode is packed with practical guidance to help your team turn in-person events into measurable marketing wins.

Companies have crucial data stored across multiple systems in their organization. And the bigger the company, the more systems there are. Sales, marketing, finance, ERP, inventory, contract management, billing, and service delivery are just types of data and systems that show the story of the business. Many times your CRM just by itself can't show all of that!Because of this, many companies have started setting up a centralized data warehouse like Snowflake or Redshift to pull in data from their CRM and other systems to be able to run more advanced and centralized reporting across it all. But if you want to set this up, where do you start? How do you manage it? How do you protect it? How do you keep it maintained? How do you actually derive value from all the hard work of implementing it?I contacted Ryan Severns to talk through all these questions with him. We talk through all these questions and more, starting with questions like:Why set up a CRM data warehouse infrastructure in the first place?How do you build the integration?What important considerations do you need to plan for?We dig deeper into the details from there, talking through topics like ETL tooling, DBT, data governance, cross-platform analytics, building effective business intelligence systems, and more.If you're ready to level up your customer data skills and advance to the next level of your RevOps hero journey, this episode is for you! Give it a watch and a like. And hit that subscribe button so that you'll always get notified of future episodes of The RevOps Hero Podcast as well.

Running a Salesforce-HubSpot go-to-market stack is one of the most common tech setups in businesses today. Many businesses manage it using HubSpot's native Salesforce integration. But some businesses instead choose to build their own custom integration. Why would they do that? Should your company consider custom-building your HubSpot-Salesforce integration as well? We talk with Erick Salvatierra on this exact topic. We discuss topics like: When should you use the standard HubSpot-Salesforce integration? When would a custom integration be better? We discuss specific factors including: sync frequency requirements, field mapping requirements, number of records to sync, compliance requirements, and more. If you decide to build a custom integration, how should you do it?- After the integration is built, how should you do maintenance and error handling? When should you use an iPaaS / middleware solution vs. fully custom-coding an integration? Why should you bother with integration at all? If you're running Salesforce and HubSpot at a medium- or large-sized company, this episode will be incredibly valuable for you. So give it a like and a watch, and hit that subscribe button so that you never miss any future episodes of The RevOps Hero Podcast.

Over the past year, I've noticed a growing confusion among marketers and sales professionals about the different types of email tools—and it's leading to serious consequences. In this video, I delve into the two main types of sales and marketing email tools: 1:many and 1:1. Understanding the distinction isn't just technical—it's essential for protecting your email domain reputation and ensuring your messages reach the intended audience.

We do a deep dive into marketing operations with Lauren Sanyal in this episode.

The go-to-market motion for product-led growth (PLG) SaaS companies is VERY different from sales-led growth companies. ➡️ The contact lifecycle/funnel stages are different ➡️ The data/system architecture is different ➡️ The relationship between the CRM and billing systems are different. ➡️ The key funnel conversion rates are different. Instead of setting up sales pipelines, hiring Account Executives, and managing territories, you're doing defining custom in-app behavior triggers, you're integrating your CRM to your app user records or intermediary tools like data warehouses, and you're tracking a very different set of success metrics. And the sheer amount of data will usually be significantly larger as well. What is the best way to run a CRM and marketing system like HubSpot for PLG SaaS companies like this? Emma Cimolini knows a thing or two about this subject. She's been using HubSpot to build out go-to-market systems for SaaS startups and big publicly traded software companies for years. She's built and launched multiple growth teams and has deep experience in building productive relationships with sales teams. In this episode, we talk through how to set up HubSpot to run product-led growth motions for SaaS companies. We discuss: 1️⃣ How to set up your system architecture and data architecture between HubSpot and different systems like your app databases, data warehouses, app analytics tools, web analytics tools, and billing systems 2️⃣ How and when to decide whether HubSpot or your data warehouse should be your company's primary source of truth 3️⃣ How to make the case to get engineering resources for building your PLG funnel 4️⃣ How to map out PLG-focused contact lifecycle stages in HubSpot 5️⃣ What to watch out for when reporting on MRR and other financial metrics between HubSpot and your billing system 6️⃣ Technical constraints to watch out for in terms of API limits, multi-object reporting, data management, and engineering development time This is a must-watch episode for anyone working in go-to-market teams at PLG-focused SaaS companies! And if you're at a company that runs Salesforce as your CRM rather than HubSpot, this episode will also apply to you as well. Most of the topics we cover here are equally as important to companies running Salesforce or other CRMs as companies running HubSpot by itself. Give this episode a listen and learn what you need to know for building up a killer go-to-market motion for your PLG-focused company.

RevOps is the backbone of a company. It touches every business function: marketing, sales, customer success, finance, operations, and IT. But when a role touches a little bit of everything, how do you concisely define what that role itself is? Where does it fit in your company structure? Who should RevOps report to? We talk through all of these things in this episode with Brandon Dith-Berry. We then move on to discussing the systems architecture that Brandon has implemented at his company Zeni: what are the different systems they're running, and how they structure and pass data between their CRM system (HubSpot), their billing system, their user analytics system, and their custom-built internal tools. There's a lot of meat on the bone in this episode! Give Brandon Dith-Berry a connect or a follow on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandondithberry/ Learn more about ClearPivot and how we help turn people like you into RevOps heroes at your company here: ⁠https://www.clearpivot.com

In this episode we talk with Nick Jensen, who runs marketing operations for the world-famous Tony Robbins. Nick and his teammates run a marketing-sales operation with a contact database in the millions, using Salesforce and HubSpot together to run their operations. We talk about: The similarities and difference between their B2C and B2B customer lifecycles and sales pipelines How they connect HubSpot to Salesforce for people objects compared to contact and account objects How they decide what object and event data to sync between Salesforce and HubSpot How they run large-scale email marketing (40 million emails per month) What are the top sales and marketing KPIs that they track How they set up a custom object in Salesforce and HubSpot to track key contact activities as well as affiliate tracking Similarities and differences between their prior Salesforce-Marketo integration and their current Salesforce-HubSpot integration Give this episode a watch or a listen to learn how to run a high-impact marketing and revenue operations systems across Salesforce and HubSpot running at large scale.

Ever run into friction with the sales team in a marketing role? You'll want to listen to this episode. We go deep into the full marketing-sales lifecycle in this episode with our guest Kristina McConnell from H1. She talks through how they run the full customer journey from marketing leads to BDR qualification to Account Executive handoff. We cover topics such as: How to manage contact lifecycle stages throughout the process How Kristina tracks attribution data through the process How Kristina and her team have integrated HubSpot and Salesforce to track their full customer journey How Kristina approaches marketing for a product with heavy awareness-building needs How to best equip sales reps with relevant prospect intelligence Give this episode a listen and learn how to better work with your colleagues on the sales team so that you can all win together.

In this episode we go into the operational side of marketing: how to run all the systems and data that power a company's sales and marketing efforts. We talk to Travis Johnson, who leads marketing operations at Velo3D.We talk through how they run Salesforce and Marketo together, how they structure their data in the systems, how they do campaigns, attribution, and lead scoring, and much more.Give this episode a listen to learn from Travis how to built out a whip-smart operational machine for your own company's marketing engine.

It's easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of data and metrics that sales and marketing tools report on nowadays. You can get pages and pages of metrics from platforms like HubSpot, Google Analytics, Salesforce, Meta Ads Manager, and so on. How do you know which metrics are the most important and which you should ignore? In this episode, we walk through which key sales and marketing metrics we track for ourselves at ClearPivot.

You can have the greatest marketing campaign ever and still see your company miss its goals if you don't have a rock-solid sales process to back it up. So it's crucial to get your sales pipeline process running as well as your marketing campaigns. But where and how should you start? In this episode, ClearPivot founder Chris Strom walks through how we run our own sales pipeline process at ClearPivot. Give this episode a listen, and you will come away with some actionable ideas to apply to your own company's sales process, so that the sales team will be hitting their numbers more and you will look like even more of a Marketing Hero at your company.

Marketing teams nowadays spend a LOT of time managing their website. And WordPress is the most common platform choice for managing company websites. But WordPress has severe risks and liabilities that we believe make it a poor choice for most company websites nowadays. In this episode we talk about 6 specific reasons why WordPress is a bad choice for most companies' websites, and why we recommend using HubSpot CMS instead.

Web analytics don't tell the full story. ClearPivot Founder Chris Strom joins The Marketing Hero to explain the limitations of web analytics like source tracking, and advocate for asking people directly, "How did you find us?" Listen for important details on how to use web analytics and self-reported attribution together to create a fuller picture of how your company is attracting leads.

ClearPivot agency Founder Chris Strom discusses 5 common mistakes he's seen clients make over and over in his 13 years as a HubSpot partner, and suggests the best ways to combat them. Come on in, and find out if you've been over automating, leaving SQLs on the table, or doing one of these other common marketing mis-steps!

On episode 38 of The Marketing Hero Podcast, we're joined by Zack Wenthe, Senior Technical Product Marketing Manager and product evangelist for Treasure Data. It's a customer data platform that aims to help businesses reclaim customer-centricity by focusing on purposeful engagement. We'll dive into what that means and how CDPs deal with questions of data privacy and tightening regulations along with some personal insights into Zack's career.

On today's episode of The Marketing Hero podcast, I'm talking with Dave Fink, Founder and CEO of Postie. Over a 20-year career he's generated hundreds of millions of dollars in ad revenue, powered viral sensations like Dollar Shave Club, and helped launch celebrity startups for Jessica Simpson, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, and Kate Bosworth. Now as founder and CEO of Postie, he's out to reinvent direct mail marketing for a digital world. Our conversation focuses on the story of how Postie developed and executed their own go-to-market strategy and marketing plans. Spoiler: They went about it backwards.

Peter Wheeler has a big title and an even bigger job as the Senior Marketing Manager for Social Impact, Startups and Self Service for Auth0.org, a corporate social impact “startup” within the Auth0 product unit of Okta. On this episode of The Marketing Hero podcast with Maia Morgan Wells, the discussion gets deep about the intricacies of trying to make a positive impact on the world through enterprise identity management. Let's dive in ... and give back.

Welcome to episode 35 of The Marketing Hero podcast with our host Maia Wells and her guest, Nick Topping, Head of Marketing & Business Development in the Americas for SafetyCulture. It's a SaaS company that makes the checklist & inspection app iAuditor. The conversation gets into product-led growth and the freemium model, plus sales-marketing alignment secrets you don't want to miss.

On this episode of The Marketing Hero Podcast, we welcome Sejal Korenromp, VP of Global Field Marketing for Snyk. Our discussion focuses on what it's like to build an international marketing team with true focus on respecting local culture. From virtual events to real-life conferences and building community among their developer audience, localizing marketing and truly connecting with ideal customers is what Sejal's team does best. Let's get into it with Sejal Korenromp.

This episode of The Marketing Hero Podcast features a conversation about high growth leadership and the power of building out a "media business" approach to B2B marketing. Kathleen Booth is the the Senior VP of Marketing at Tradeswell, a B2B SaaS solution going all-in on 'The Current' a fully-fledged media destination and daily newsletter that curates e-commerce news and resources. Kathleen is a sought-after business mentor who has advised agencies, startups and e-commerce companies

Welcome to a conversation about following your entrepreneurial spirit. Join host Maia Wells with guest Marlee Gauthier, Marketing Director for StatSocial and dig into evolving tools like social audience insights. Get your answer to the question, "How can we better understand our audiences while respecting increasing demand for consumer privacy protection?"

Join Maia Morgan Wells as she interviews Product Marketing Director Shelby Britton, who spent 13 years at Adobe, and is now at media experience cloud provider, Cloudinary. Listen in for a conversation about the multi-functional role of product marketing and why metrics and business goals are so darn important for marketers.

Our podcast host and conversation-starter, Maia Morgan Wells, gets into B2C SaaS marketing with Asaf Rothem, CMO of Seeking Alpha. Formerly at companies like Wix and BrightInfo, Asaf is now leading a team of 40 in the competitive investing scene, with eyes on the all-important KPI of company ARR. Find out how Asaf helps his team to hit their goals without burning out on this episode of The Marketing Hero podcast by ClearPivot.

Join guest host Chris Strom as he interviews Dylan Gallagher of Bridge Capital. This episode is full of detailed, practical tips on how to apply HubSpot to different uses in different businesses. If you're looking for tactical HubSpot advice, this is the episode for you.

Join Maia Wells and The Marketing Hero podcast for an interview with Carey Straetz, Head of Demand Generation at Mode. A "yes, and" approach to leadership combined with a career's worth of learning how to guide teams in the right direction has made Carey one of the most respected marketing leaders in the SaaS space. Listen in for real tips on forming a diverse team and achieving real results together.

On this episode of The Marketing Hero, Maia Wells talks with Nate Smoyer about startup life and what it's like to do what you want. As a podcast host and Marketing Director himself, Nate knows how to give great advice, and tells a great story. This interview includes detailed tips for rebuilding a failing marketing team and surviving startup life. Join us now!

On today's episode The Marketing Hero podcast is pleased to welcome Kelsey Johnson, Product Marketing Manager for AWeber, a global leader in email automation. We're going to take a bit of a different approach today and take you into a more personal conversation about what it's like to be a woman in a male-dominated field like software as a service and more broadly, technology.

Arun Janakiraman (Arun J) is one of the most accomplished guests we've ever had on The Marketing Hero podcast. Listen now for the inside perspective from an SEO-minded Product Manager with experiences at Zoom Apps, Pinterest, Slideshare, LinkedIn and Lynda.

Join Maia Wells as she discusses key predictions for SaaS marketing in 2022 with Act-On Software CMO David Greenberg. Tune in for advice on how to react to increased privacy controls and consumer experience expectations on this episode of The Marketing Hero.

Tony DiBernardo opens up about finding his sweet spot in customer education and what it takes to truly engage and support SaaS customers in the self-service era. Listen now for inspiration to find your own passion and follow it, even when it means major career shifts.

On this episode, we have SEO expert Micah Fisher-Kirshner, who previously lead strategy for big names like Zazzle and Zendesk. He now manages a set of B2B SaaS portfolio companies around SEO and Content at a growth equity firm called Turn/River Capital. Tune in for details on what it's like to build up successful SEO programs for a set of ever-changing portfolio companies.

Abishek Surana Rajendra has the DNA of a software engineer, the mind of an SEO expert, and the heart of a marketer. Join us on episode 21 of The Marketing Hero podcast, where we discuss the crucial connection between engineering and SEO. Especially at the scale of billions of page views (yes, with a b), there are nuances of technical SEO that can make a big difference for attracting organic traffic. Want to reach Abishek Surana Rajendra? https://www.linkedin.com/in/abishek-surana-rajendra/

Micky Teng joins The Marketing Hero podcast to discuss what it really means to market to developers, including a keen awareness of the developer b.s. detector whenever constructing marketing messaging. Plus, super detailed advice on finding the right product marketer for your SaaS start-up team. If you want to hear a candid conversation with the Head of Product Marketing at Magic, this is the episode for you. Want to get in touch with Micky Teng? https://www.linkedin.com/in/mickyteng/

Rand Fishkin is a legend to internet marketing nerds like us. He's the Co-Founder and CEO of SparkToro and was Founder of the legendary SEO company, Moz, as well as Co-Founder of Inbound.org, which later became HubSpot. We're honored to get Rand's thoughts on the "internet duopoly" Google and Facebook, and how putting too much power in one place limits access in the name of profit. We hold nothing back, so dive into this episode for some unfiltered discussion of the current state of online marketing, advertising, content and SEO.

Considering a career change, or expanding your skillset into SaaS marketing? This episode of The Marketing Hero Podcast offers a detailed look at what it's like to make the transition from marketing brick and mortar businesses into selling technologies and softwares into those businesses. Join Stacy Schulist, former marketing and branding lead for Black Angus restaurants, for an inside perspective.

Databox Marketing Director, John Bonini, gets into detail about content marketing, including one tip for topic planning that you will be able to use immediately to triple the effectiveness of your content. Tap play to get details about how Databox has implemented content marketing as the main pillar of its marketing strategy, why delegation is a Marketing Director's most important skill, and what we can all learn from systems thinking.

ClearPivot Senior Consultant Monica Evans details her approach to SaaS marketing with several real client examples, including practical advice you can steal. And, here's a link to the SEO topic cluster information we referenced: https://www.clearpivot.com/topic-clusters-and-pillar-content-the-new-foundation-of-seo

Sridhar Ramanathan is Co-Founder of Aventi Group, a product marketing agency working with some of the world's biggest names in SaaS. He formerly led managed services marketing for HP, and shares some of the most poignant insights we've heard on routes to market for SaaS. Enjoy the episode.

Join us in conversation with the unstoppable TK Kader for some important insights into the Go-To-Market (GTM) process for SaaS. TK was CEO & Founder at ToutApp (backed by a16z, Jackson Square Ventures and prominent angel investors in Silicon Valley). After scaling ToutApp, it was acquired by Marketo where TK went on to join Marketo's executive team and serve as their Senior Vice President of Strategy. After running a 2-year transformation as part of the executive team, Marketo was acquired by Adobe for $4.75bn. TK now spends his time as a Strategic Advisor to 50+ B2B SaaS Founders globally. As Founder of Unstoppable Strategies, he helps Founders grow their startups faster through his weekly Youtube videos (tkkader.com/youtube) and his SaaS Go-To-Market Coaching Program (tkkader.com/gtm).

Senior UX/UI Designer, C. Vincent Plummer gets into some very candid thoughts about what it's like to work with marketing. Tune into this episode if you want to hear some common ways things can go wrong between product and marketing, and get Vince's vision for how it can all be better. Check for C. Vincent Plummer on LinkedIn, or PlumCharlie on music platforms and Instagram.

Link with Winona Rajamohan here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/winonarajamohan/

Expert Google Analytics Consultant and Educator, Kyle Akerman, joins us to discuss healthy analytics set-up, the most important reports you should be looking at, and 3 common mistakes that could be killing your numbers. Finally get a handle on what you actually need to look at in Google Analytics, and be a marketing hero today.

If you're looking to rebrand or rebuild your website there are a few things to be aware of if your end goal is to grow organically. We sit down with DeepCrawl's, Director of Technical SEO, Ashley Berman Hale to discuss the most important things to keep in mind when building your website.

In this episode, we sit down with Corina Ludwig, President of FunctionFox, and timesheet and project management tool, to discuss the benefits of different project management tools and things to look out for when deciding on a tool for your company.

In this episode, Saylor Bowler, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Nylas, a unified communications platform that allows developers to connect to every email, calendar, and contacts provider in the world, discusses the power of synergy between departments to create an exceptional marketing team.

In this episode, we sit down with Samantha Rupert, a social media expert, to discuss what the best practices are for SaaS companies when it comes to social media marketing.

In this episode, we sit down with Arttu Haho, CEO of Finnish company, Trustmary, to discuss what it was like breaking into the US market and the challenges he's faced. In addition, we talk about the importance of social proof and how companies can use their software to generate track leads.

In this episode, we sit down with Steve Ammann, Managing Partner of Sales MEDDIC Group, where we discuss how to incorporate MEDDIC sales into large SaaS companies to help them reach their revenue goals. In addition, we discuss how each department within the company can help improve sales from marketing all the way to customer success.

In this episode, we sit down with Tim Gasper, Director of Product at data.world, to dive into what a product marketer role does and how it fits within a SaaS company. Learn more about how to set up your marketing teams and what content types to focus on.