Podcast appearances and mentions of mark kilens

In this episode of the DMI podcast, host ⁠Will Francis⁠ speaks with ⁠Mark Kilens⁠, CEO and co-founder of ⁠Tack⁠, a community and consultancy focused on helping companies go to market. Mark shares a fresh perspective on how go-to-market strategies must evolve by putting people, not companies, at the heart of everything. From building trust to leveraging networks over traditional channels, Mark offers plenty of insights that challenge the status quo and equip marketers to thrive in a rapidly changing landscape. Mark's top 3 insights:Focus on People-First GTM built around relationships, storytelling, and partnerships.Build an owned audience through value-led content and free tools, not just blog posts.Prioritize network leverage over channels: think people, places, and brands as your new marketing reach.Timestamps0:00:25 – What is People-First Go-To-Market (GTM)?0:03:02 – Common challenges: Positioning and Ideal Customer Profiles0:06:54 – The importance of ecosystems and partnerships0:09:47 – Distribution leverage and marketing in noisy environments0:12:31 – Channels vs. Networks: A mindset shift0:18:24 – The role of AI in GTM strategy and marketing careers0:23:56 – Why build a community? The power of owned audiences0:27:58 – Using free tools to deliver value and collect data0:34:00 – Real-world client scenarios and solutions Tack provides0:36:38 – The over-reliance on paid media and what to do instead0:41:23 – What product metrics reveal about GTM effectiveness0:42:27 – Mark's GTM checklist: ICPs, messaging, networks0:45:45 – Career reflections and advice for marketers-----------------------The Ahead of the Game podcast is brought to you by the Digital Marketing Institute and is available on our ⁠⁠⁠⁠website⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠.Check out the DMI's extensive digital marketing library of ebooks, toolkits, webinars, guides, templates, and more! ⁠⁠⁠⁠Join for free today⁠⁠⁠⁠.If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review so others can find us!

Have you ever wanted to own and run a ski resort? If your name is Mark Kilens, the answer is a rHave you ever wanted to own and run a ski resort? If your name is Mark Kilens, the answer is a resounding 'Yes!' On the latest episode of Talking Too Loud, Chris Savage and Sylvie sit down with the former founder of HubSpot Academy, current founder of media and marketing firm Tack, to talk a little about dream jobs and a lot about the evolving trust dynamics in B2B marketing. From the rise of influencers to the shift in person-led go-to-market strategies, tune in for insights that will help you stay ahead of the digital marketing curve.Links to Learn More:Follow Mark on LinkedInFollow Savage on LinkedInFollow Sylvie on LinkedInSubscribe to Talking Too Loud on WistiaWatch on YouTubeFollow Talking Too Loud on InstagramFollow Talking Too Loud on TikTokLove what you heard? Leave us a review on Apple!Leave us a review on Spotify!

"But that's a beautiful thing around a people-first approach. You build things with other people in a very public way, and that helps you do your marketing and sales in a more efficient way," says Mark Kilens from TACK.In this episode of The Content Cocktail Hour, we are joined by special guests Nick Bennett and Mark Kilens from TACK. Nick and Mark discuss the evolution of building a community and audience with a people-first approach to business. They share practical strategies to prioritize transparency and authenticity and uncover how transparent pricing, personal marketing emails, and educational, value-based content can revolutionize how you connect with your audience.Resources:Connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-gandolf/ Check out The Juice HQ: https://www.thejuicehq.com/ Connect with Nick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickbennett1/Connect with Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markkilens/ Check out TACK: https://www.tackgtm.com/ Timestamps:[00:00] Market and customer behaviors[06:05] Using storytelling, relationships, and partnerships to sell[07:37] Diversified funnel and community building[11:18] Leveraging demand[16:40] Experimenting with podcast and video-based content[17:24] Transitioning from on-prem to cloud[20:28] Unlocking opportunities with a well-defined strategy[25:01] Customer acquisition and growth strategy[27:42] Generational shift impacting market and consumption habits

Prepare to redefine your marketing game as we join forces with Mark Kilens, the mastermind CEO of TAC, who brings with him a wealth of knowledge from Airmeet, Drift, and HubSpot Academy. Discover a treasure trove of tips for connecting with your audience on a human level, transforming go-to-market strategies that no longer just capture demand, but cultivate meaningful relationships. Get ready to find out how to infuse a human touch in your business interactions that will not just resonate but also generate revenue.Throughout the conversation, we unwrap the art of storytelling in B2B marketing and how it can do more than just sell a product—it can build trust. Mark and I explore the potent combination of storytelling, relationships, and partnerships. These are the indispensable pillars that support a strong marketing structure, aligning perfectly with the evolved consumer behavior of today. Learn how to narrate the emotional value behind your product, focusing on the outcomes rather than just the features.Finally, we venture into the collaborative landscape where integrated partner-led growth strategies come into play. From leveraging ComStore's GoToNetwork for smarter partnerships to adapting marketing strategies in accordance with macro market conditions, we cover it all. We also discuss the emergence of people-led growth tactics and how these can be powered by AI, while never forgetting the irreplaceable human element. Tune in, and be inspired by a blend of innovative ideas that could be the missing piece in your marketing puzzle.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MOps-Apalooza is back by popular demand in Anaheim, California! Register for the magical community-led conference for Marketing and Revenue Operations pros.Support the show

What's the secret behind crafting successful go-to-market strategies that stand the test of time and market shifts? In this episode, Mark Kilens, people-first GTM champion, shares how to align customer problems with product offerings amidst the rapid commoditization of software development, and what role continuous learning plays in this ever-evolving landscape. Join us as we unravel the mysteries behind sustainable marketing, experimentation, and the pivotal role of people-first approaches in activating exponential growth for brands.

Mark Kilens, CEO & Co-Founder of Tack. Mark spoke at the Demand Gen Summit, discussing how companies can take back control of their go-to-market strategies to drive more revenue. To stay current on our latest events, follow us on Linkedin. Useful Timestamps:1:18 - There is a need for businesses to adopt a different GTM approach. The concept of “people-first” is introduced.6:06 - Increase competition for the attention and explosion of data generation. 10:22 - Emphasize a people-first approach to marketing and create memorable experiences.16:00 - Examples of how events can act as catalysts for creating engagement, fellowship, and leads.20:01 - Trends are observed in the data. 21:57 - There is a lot of richness in first-party data. It has a large role in event-led growth.27:43 - Closing Remarks. 

Dare to take a dive into the headspace of some of marketing's best minds?   Daniel does—and he's traveling back to relive some of his guests' hottest takes to find out the #1 marketing hill they'd be willing to die on. This week, we're unleashing some of the most psychologically unnerving takes we could find—and these guests aren't afraid to hold back their thoughts on exactly what motivates people to buy.  Melina Palmer from “The Brainy Business,” Mark Jung, the VP of Nextiva's Marketing department, and the CEO and Co-Founder of TACK, Mark Kilens are here to dish their deepest, darkest secrets about the inner depths of the consumer psyche.  Ready to know exactly what motivates people to buy? Then we dare you to hit play!   Follow Melina:  Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-brainy-business-understanding-the-psychology/id1404578385   Follow Mark Jung: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markpjung/   Follow Mark Kilens: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markkilens/   Follow Daniel: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingmillennials/featured Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Dmurr68 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing   Sign up for The Marketing Millennials newsletter:  www.workweek.com/brand/the-marketing-millennials   Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit: www.workweek.com

Guest: Mark Kilens, CMO at Airmeet (at the time of the recording) In this episode, Mark shares: What the term “event-led” really means The many forms events can take: user groups, webinars, etc. Why events are one of the most impactful methods of marketing Some examples of organizations driven by event-led growth (like…The Grateful Dead(!)) How strategically nurturing leads at small events helps organizations close deals at large, annual conferences How setting clear goals for community events allows for better measurement and more meaningful KPIs Additional Links: Follow Airmeet on LinkedIn

Steve Goldhaber welcomes Mark Kilens, an accomplished marketer boasting over 15 years of industry experience, to this episode of the Interesting B2B Marketers podcast. With an impressive career spanning organizations like HubSpot, Drift, and Airmeet, Mark's insights are grounded in extensive practical experience.In this episode, the duo delves into several riveting topics:The transformation process of businesses from a community-led model to a member-led model.The creation of a new category in a saturated B2B marketplace.Candid insights from Mark's time at HubSpot, focusing on its unique workplace culture.An exploration of future trends in inbound marketing.Strategic ways for B2B marketers to stand out in their field.The importance of adopting a CEO's mindset for successful marketing.Tune into this engaging conversation on Apple, Spotify, and the 26 Characters website.Stay connected with Mark Kilens and Steve Goldhaber by following them on LinkedIn.

In this episode of The Anonymous Marketer, host Nick Bennett and guest Mark Kilens, CMO of Airmeet and co-founder of ClubPF, dive deep into the art of building a marketing organization from scratch. They tackle a listener's query about constructing a marketing team for a SaaS data analytics company. The duo shares insights on gaining momentum and setting the stage for success.Kilens introduces his unique equation for momentum. He emphasizes the need for clear goals and metrics. These tools, he suggests, are vital for tracking progress and maintaining the pace. The conversation is a masterclass in strategic planning and execution.This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to build a marketing team from the ground up. Bennett and Kilens offer a roadmap to success, providing listeners with practical advice and actionable strategies. Tune in to learn from their wealth of experience and knowledge.

In this episode of The Anonymous Marketer, host Nick Bennett and guest Mark Kilens, CMO of Airmeet, dive into the art of building a marketing organization from scratch. They discuss the importance of a belief system, a rallying cry that brings employees, customers, and the community together. Mark emphasizes that every business, regardless of size or industry, can have a belief system that informs their marketing strategy.The conversation then shifts to the practical aspects of building a marketing team. Mark suggests starting with a strong generalist marketer who understands how to market in public and learn from what they ship. As the team grows, it's crucial to start specializing in the core functions of marketing, such as brand/content, product marketing, and demand/revenue marketing.Wrapping up, Nick and Mark tease a part two where they will delve deeper into how to build momentum with a new marketing organization. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to build or revamp their marketing team from the ground up.Special thanks to our sponsors:DirectiveGoogle

Mark Kilens has built a career as a marketing leader and category designer with HubSpot and Drift. Now, he's the CMO at Airmeet, the company behind Event-Led Growth.In this conversation, we break down what Mark's learned as a category designer, including:How to wrap your category in a familiar context to help buyers understand it.Mark's 3 step framework for developing category language.Why category design needs to be led by a CEO who can keep the team focused on the category strategy.To participate in our live podcasts and events, join our community for free at CategoryThinkers.com.

Events are no longer a 'nice to have' for companies. Instead, they are opening the doors to stronger relationships and engaging with customers to become a massive opportunity in a people-first Go-to-Market' plan. This week, Mark Kilens, CMO at Airmeet joins Jay to talk about how they are using events as a catalyst for understanding and ultimately supporting customers through thoughtful, scalable events that are creating two-way experiences in a fast-moving and dynamic way. Connect with Mark -- Gain Grow Retain exists to connect people, knowledge, and ideas to advance the state of customer success. We're on a mission to connect B2B SaaS customer success leaders so that we can learn from one another. Check out more at GainGrowRetain.com! Or follow our GGR LinkedIn page. GGR was co-founded by Jeff Breunsbach and Jay Nathan - be sure to follow for customer success content.

In this episode, I talk to Mark Kilens, CMO of Airmeet. We broke down how to create a webinar programme that doesn't make your mother want to cry with boredom. From how to structure a series to knowing what characteristics a killer host should exhibit - this is a blueprint on how to stand out from the 1,000s of terrible live video shows out there. *** I'm developing a packaged service to help B2B brands create, produce and distribute their own podcast in under 8 weeks. Includes full end-to-end support - ideation, artwork, guest booking, scriptwriting, editing, distribution, and even hosting if needed. If you're interested in taking part in the initial pilot - or curious to know whether a podcast makes sense for your business - drop me an email at jason@b2b-better.com or book a time to chat with me using this link: https://calendly.com/jasonbradwell/30-minute-discovery-call?month=2023-04 You can also follow me on LinkedIn. Head over here: linkedin.com/in/jasonbradwell

How do you build a loyal customer base? By giving them the best experience you can through great content.Mark Kilens is CMO at Airmeet, the all-in-one platform for your virtual and hybrid events and webinars. In this episode from the archives, he joins Daniel as they get into the weeds of how to start creating an experience for your audience, the importance of community, and how events can create communities.You'll also hear what Mark learnt as former VP of Content and Community at Drift and as VP of Hubspot Academy.And if you LOVE The Marketing Millennials drop us a five-star review at: https://ratethispodcast.com/marketingmillennials, I really appreciate your support!.Follow Mark:LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/markkilensTwitter: twitter.com/MarkKilensKeep up to date with the latest news from The Marketing Millennials:.Follow Daniel on Twitter: twitter.com/Dmurr68LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing Sign up to The Marketing Millennials newsletter: workweek.com/brand/the-marketing-millennials

Sarah sits with Mark Kilens, CMO of Airmeet. Mark and his team drive event engagement through a planned strategy to successfully cover all three chapters of an event: the before, during, and after. Sarah and Mark discuss how marketers must apply strategy as a fundamental approach in the field. Staying ahead, rethinking, and moving forward with evolution is crucial to achieving strategies that will make a difference!

Mark Kilens is Chief Marketing Officer of event-led engagement platform, Airmeet, leading a global team of marketing professionals who are working to advance the event-led growth movement across the B2B events category. Prior to joining Airmeet, he served as VP of Content and Community at Drift, and oversaw Drift Insider, a community of 50,000+ members. He also previously held the title of VP of Marketing at HubSpot and went on to build HubSpot Academy from the ground up, which led the company to surpass $600 Million USD in revenue. Listen to The Tony DUrso Show on VoiceAmerica Influencers Platform every Friday at 2pm Pacific or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or tonydurso.com/podcast.

Mark Kilens is Chief Marketing Officer of event-led engagement platform, Airmeet, leading a global team of marketing professionals who are working to advance the event-led growth movement across the B2B events category. Prior to joining Airmeet, he served as VP of Content and Community at Drift, and oversaw Drift Insider, a community of 50,000+ members. He also previously held the title of VP of Marketing at HubSpot and went on to build HubSpot Academy from the ground up, which led the company to surpass $600 Million USD in revenue. Listen to The Tony DUrso Show on VoiceAmerica Influencers Platform every Friday at 2pm Pacific or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or tonydurso.com/podcast.

Mark Kilens is Chief Marketing Officer of event-led engagement platform, Airmeet, leading a global team of marketing professionals who are working to advance the event-led growth movement across the B2B events category. Prior to joining Airmeet, he served as VP of Content and Community at Drift, and oversaw Drift Insider, a community of 50,000+ members. He also previously held the title of VP of Marketing at HubSpot and went on to build HubSpot Academy from the ground up, which led the company to surpass $600 Million USD in revenue. Listen to The Tony DUrso Show on VoiceAmerica Influencers Platform every Friday at 2pm Pacific or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or tonydurso.com/podcast.

The business closest to the customer wins.This is because if you can speak directly to your customers' pain points in their own language, they trust you have the solution they need.But businesses tend to spend the majority of their resources (time, money, attention) on activities that happen nowhere close to their customer.That's why the idea of Event-Led Growth is one you should consider.On this show, Mark Kilens, CMO of Airmeet, will teach you what  Event-Led Growth means and show you: - why events are a more efficient way to discover prospects, engage buyers, and grow advocates- how most companies are underutilizing events, and the opportunity it creates for you- what you can do to de-risk your event strategy and make sure it drives longterm success for your team- how the next generation of influencer marketing is an event strategy- and more!Mark has led one of the greatest customer marketing successes in tech as VP of the Hubspot Academy, been a part of an epic category design as VP of content and community at Drift, and is about make Airmeet the next great success story in SaaS. Don't miss your chance to connect and learn from his cutting edge strategies and real world experience.Connect with Mark:On her LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markkilens/Connect with ME!Online at:LinkedIn or Instagram.Support the show

► What is Event-Led Growth? ✔ Mark Kilens is CMO @ Airmeet

Mark Kilens is Chief Marketing Officer of Airmeet, a virtual and hybrid event platform. While it's been a challenging couple of years, events of all kinds—virtual, hybrid, and live—are critical components of the content marketing landscape. Mark and I discussed all of this and more, this week on the On Brand podcast. About Mark Kilens As Chief Marketing Officer of virtual and hybrid event platform, Airmeet, Mark Kilens leads a global team of marketing professionals who are working to advance the event-led growth movement across the B2B events category. Kilens has 15 years of marketing leadership experience. His main goal is to help global businesses engage and grow their customer base through event-led growth practices. This consists of using immersive and integrated events across the entire customer journey to create a highly personalized digital experience. Prior to joining Airmeet, he served as VP of Content and Community at Drift, and oversaw Drift Insider, a community of 50,000+ members. He also previously held the title of VP of Marketing at HubSpot and went on to build HubSpot Academy from the ground up, which led the company to surpass $600 Million USD in revenue. Episode Highlights “We need to expand our definition of events,” Mark began. “Events include webinars and online events as well.” Mark went on to talk about how podcasts are events as well. Chicken or egg? In talking about the interrelationship between content and events, Mark posed a classic chicken-and-egg question: what should come first—the content or the event? Mark made a case for both. “It really depends on what you're doing with your event.” “If there's one thing to do differently in your events …” I love this type of statement from a guest. Mark suggests that we need to spend as much time planning the event as we do producing and promoting it. This adds up to time well spent as you dig deeper on what your event is and who it's for. What brand has made Mark smile recently? “Patagonia—I just love the brand and the product,” Mark noted. “Plus they're picking a side and that's important in branding today.” To learn more, you can connect with Mark on LinkedIn and Twitter. As We Wrap … Listen and subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon/Audible, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn, iHeart, YouTube, and RSS. Rate and review the show—If you like what you're hearing, be sure to head over to Apple Podcasts and click the 5-star button to rate the show. And, if you have a few extra seconds, write a couple of sentences and submit a review to help others find the show. Did you hear something you liked on this episode or another? Do you have a question you'd like our guests to answer? Let me know on Twitter using the hashtag #OnBrandPodcast and you may just hear your thoughts here on the show. On Brand is a part of the Marketing Podcast Network. Until next week, I'll see you on the Internet! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let's face it: events are evolving and taking on the virtual and hybrid route. But as more businesses incorporate these strategies into their marketing mix, you're probably scratching your head wondering… “Where do I even begin?”That's why we've brought on Mark Kilens to give event marketers some ammunition to think better and differently!Mark has gone far in the marketing industry, having built HubSpot Academy from the ground up to working as VP of Content and Community at Drift. Now he's the first-ever CMO of Airmeet, a leading virtual and hybrid event platformHe shared his expertise and talked about:- Current struggles in the in-event space- Why a diversified event portfolio is essential- How to build a connection and relationship nowadays (versus 3 years ago)- Maximizing reach or relevancyDon't miss the chance to join the dialogue on how virtual and hybrid events play a big role.Whether you just need to understand the basics or would like in-depth knowledge, connect with us in this episode!Connect with Mark: On his LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markkilens/ Connect with Me:On my LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-kleinrock-9613b22b/   On my Company: https://rockwayexhibits.com/ 

Technological advances are coming so rapidly that the phrase “what got you here won't get you there” rings true for almost every industry and business model.When the only thing constant is change, it becomes increasingly important for teams to not just keep their house in order, but also continuously scan the horizon for the next great threat, resource, or opportunity. Sustainable success will require a deep understanding of both immediate and long-term customer needs, so that you can recruit the team and resources needed to address them.In today's episode of The Long Game, you'll hear what Mark Kilens, the Chief Marketing Officer at a virtual event management software called Airmeet, thinks SaaS companies should be doing to be proactive about growth — and how his team is setting themselves up for success.Show TopicsMaking education an integral part of the customer experienceThe ever-evolving role of the CMO Building a team and culture that serves your business goalsWhy event-led growth is an effective option for marketersShow LinksCheck out Airmeet's websiteLearn about Airmeet's Event Experience Cloud softwareCatch up with Mark Kilens on TwitterPast guests on The Long Game podcast include: Morgan Brown (Shopify), Ryan Law (Animalz), Dan Shure (Evolving SEO), Kaleigh Moore (freelancer), Eric Siu (Clickflow), Peep Laja (CXL), Chelsea Castle (Chili Piper), Tracey Wallace (Klaviyo), Tim Soulo (Ahrefs), Ryan McReady (Reforge), and many more.Some interviews you might enjoy and learn from:Actionable Tips and Secrets to SEO Strategy with Dan Shure (Evolving SEO)Building Competitive Marketing Content with Sam Chapman (Aprimo)How to Build the Right Data Workflow with Blake Burch (Shipyard)Data-Driven Thought Leadership with Alicia Johnston (Sprout Social)Purpose-Driven Leadership & Building a Content Team with Ty Magnin (UiPath)Also, check out our Kitchen Side series where we take you behind the scenes to see how the sausage is made at our agency:Blue Ocean vs Red Ocean SEOShould You Hire Writers or Subject Matter Experts?How Do Growth and Content Overlap?Connect with Omniscient Digital on social:Twitter: @beomniscientLinkedin: Be OmniscientListen to more episodes of The Long Game podcast here: https://beomniscient.com/podcast/

Welcome to the Use Case Podcast, episode 275. Today we'll be talking to Mark from Airmeet about the use case or business case for why his customers choose Airmeet.

In today's episode, we hear from one of the best partner-marketing leaders on the planet in Mark Kilens, and one of the most experienced partnerships people coming out of sales, Airmeet's new VP of Partnerships & Channel Sales, Rhonda Scher. Rhonda was deep into sales before working in her first partnerships role at Hopin. Mark cut his teeth building HubSpot's renowned partner and user training programs before running marketing at companies like Drift and now he's CMO of Airmeet. During our talk today, the three of us work to uncover: What partnerships mean to Mark, Rhonda and Airmeet The importance of partnerships for both Mark and Rhonda in their careers and objectives at Airmeet How partnerships lends itself to Marks core growth framework Types of partners Rhonda is working with How Rhonda puts together marketing requests What Mark needs from partnerships to treat a request from the partnerships team like an opportunity and not an obligation What can stop the partnership effort in its track if the partner person doesn't plan ahead How to take your tech integrations partnerships hat off while dealing with solutions partnerships What happens next after marketing approves a collaboration with partnerships KPIs they share and see as the next This is an excellent episode to share with your marketing team or CEO. But as usual, before we start, please hear from our amazing sponsors. Sponsors: Reveal - A free account mapping solution. Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts. ‍Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships. ‍

Product marketing and sales enablement go together like peanut butter and jelly. Why? Because they both know a LOT about their customers. And can use this knowledge to help sellers adopt a modern, consultative approach that's all about helping their customers buy. But like any relationship, both parties need to put in the work to make it work. In this episode of the Marchitect, we chat all things product marketing and sales enablement with 3 execs who play a crucial role in orchestrating winning GTM strategies: Mark Kilens, CMO at Airmeet, Ronell Hugh, SVP, Product Marketing & Strategy | Digital XM at Qualtrics, and Sheevaun Thatcher, VP Global Sales and Success Enablement at Slack.You'll learn their tips for building and maintaining a strong partnership between product marketing and enablement, what metrics they use to define success, and how they're positioning their organizations to W.I.N.

Content marketing is used to attract, engage, and retain an audience by creating and sharing relevant articles, videos, podcasts, and other media. And in a saturated market, content marketing can help brands stand out from the competition and reach audiences, adding value by providing informative and engaging content to drive brand awareness, loyalty, and ultimately, sales.But content marketing is not static, and it doesn't look the same now as it did ten years ago — just as it won't look the same in ten years. Today, content marketing comes in the form of websites, social media, podcasts, blogs, etc., and if you form your content marketing team, you must be careful in your selection, and choose only those who love the job.In this episode of Content Logistics, our host Camille Trent welcomes Mark Kilens, the CMO of Airmeet. Mark and Camille get into the importance of content marketing and how to build a content marketing team. They discuss who are good marketers and what falls under the purview of the content department.

The events industry is on the cusp of change. As we exit the pandemic era, companies are looking to understand how they can drive event growth and how events can, in turn, drive growth for their business; that's why we've brought on a special guest for this episode of #EventIcons, Mark Kilens.  Mark is the CMO of Airmeet, a leading virtual and hybrid event platform. He previously worked at Drift as the VP of Content and Community and at HubSpot as the VP of Marketing. Mark comes to us today with no shortage of experience in event-led growth. Today, Will and Mark will discuss his accomplished background, what business and event growth mean to him, and what he thinks your event mindset should be. Let's get right into it!

Today I definitely looked out for my audience and turned lemons into Lemonade. I had a podcast scheduled with Mark Kilens, CMO of Airmeet, and his new VP of Channel.... But, I forgot to invite his VP of Channel. Idiot move. This was Mark and my first ever call so we started to chat about his background and when we got onto the topic of his experience with HubSpot (Mark was VP of HubSpot Academy - the most successful SaaS academy and certification program ever), I realized how valuable his insight would be on some pain points related to training and certification programs our audience have asked me about. So, I asked if he wouldn't mind using the 30 minutes we had left to take us through his experience and advice for setting up a saas training and certification program. It turned out to be one of the more insightful conversations I've had in a long time. Marks tips: Educational content should live under marketing. Start without an LMS - you may never need it. The owner of the academy should be passionate. Make it free. If you need help, go to these guys: https://www.saasacademyadvisors.com/transformational-education-register Best education hits on all three of these: Blooms Taxonomy Why - articulate the why. Sales piece. Outcome. How - from a non-product standpoint. What - tools involved, you use with the how. Examples. "Why" = problem, "what" is the solution, "how" are the features. https://www.valamis.com/hub/blooms-taxonomy Sponsors: Reveal - A free account mapping solution. Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts. ‍Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships. ‍

Don't make this one an after thought! Event-Marketing is a new infection idea that is growing new business! Mark Kilens brings his experience from Drift and now Airmeet on how to use the full potential of Event-led-growth right to your doorstep.What does Event-Led-Growth encompass?How do we use of Event-Led-Growth in combination with your team? How do you build structures that AREN'T ambiguous and confusing?!In-person, post-pandemic, hybrid live & online-events & co-sponsorship events can be tapped into while acquiring new leads, deepening engagement, and relationship building. Ultimately Event-Led-Marketing leads to new revenue.Event-Led-Growth is:•A strategic imperative•Going-to & growing-new market places•Focusing on product-led growth•Data and high-interaction moments with new leads & relationships•Maximizing beyond sales-led growthEvent-Led Growth is not just a tactic, but a long term strategy. There is zero doubt you will walk away from this episode having a new perspective on event-marketing and be combining it within your current strategy.Leave a rating if you enjoy and tell a friend to tune in!The Sales Development Framework: by David Dulany and Kyle Vamvouris, we lay out a proven methodology for running a high performance Sales Development program, now available here in paperback Grab it here: https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Development-Framework-Productive-Program/dp/1736768905/The Tenbound Sales Development Conference is here, come learn from the best in our industry! Free virtual conference this year. Register Today! https://tenbound.com/conference/#SDR #BDR #salesdevelopment #tenbound #podcast #sales #marketing #salesengagement #salesenablement #research #prospecting #eventmarketing #marco

What is up PartnerUp!? Mark Kilens makes the case that the era of ecosystems will be ushered in by Marketing. Especially with events.We debate and discuss how partnerships and community overlay the four main growth tactics - product led, sales led, content led, and events led. We get into the future of co-marketing, and why events might be the lowest hanging fruit to bridge the gap between the nebulous world of ecosystem and the scientific world of sales and marketing automation.Mark is a former marketer at Drift and is the CMO of Airmeet, a killer events platform sponsoring the upcoming PL[X] Summit - plxsummit.com. Mark will be speaking there, so don't miss it!Never miss an episode of the world's number 1 podcast on partnerships by subscribing to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a visual person, sub to our YouTube, and see the full recording of us learning out loud.Share the episode with your commentary on LinkedIn or Twitter and we'll highlight your commentary.  We love to hear your thoughts on each episode, and always comment back or respond to emails/dms. Hey! We're real people. You can check out all past and future PartnerUp episodes at https://www.partneruppodcast.com and subscribe now to the world's number 1 partnerships newsletter, PartnerHacker Daily (PhD) at https://partnerhacker.com/

1028 Mark Kilens is the CMO of Airmeet, a leading virtual and hybrid event platform. He oversees Airmeet's global marketing team responsible for brand, demand, lifecycle, and product marketing. Airmeet helps organizations discover, engage, and grow customers using event-led growth. A new way to create immersive and integrated events across the entire customer journey. He previously was the VP of Content and Community at Drift where he led the brand, content, creative, and events teams. He oversaw Drift's community, Drift Insider, which has 50,000+ members, and Drift's FLASH, RevGrowth, and HYPERGROWTH events. Prior to joining Drift, he served as VP of Marketing and founder of HubSpot Academy. As a former customer, Mark joined HubSpot in 2010 where he spent two years working with thousands of HubSpot customers to scale their inbound strategy. From there, he went on to build HubSpot Academy from the ground up, and in doing so, educated and certified millions of people and helped grow HubSpot to more than $600 million in revenue. When he's not at Airmeet, Mark enjoys plenty of steak and lobster, a round of golf or two, and loves being on snow or in the ocean. Go fast, take chances! ___________ Want your customers to talk about you to their friends and family? That's what we do! We get your customers to talk about you so that you get more referrals with video testimonials. Go to www.BusinessBros.biz to be a guest on the show or to find out more on how we can help you get more customers! #Businesspodcasts #smallbusinesspodcast #businessmarketingtips #businessgrowthtips #strategicthinking #businessmastery #successinbusiness #businesshacks #marketingstrategist #wealthcreators #businessstrategies #businesseducation #businesstools #businesspodcast #businessmodel #growthmarketing #businesshelp #businesssupport #salesfunnel #buildyourbusiness #podcastinglife #successgoals #wealthcreation #marketingcoach #smallbusinesstips #businessmarketing #marketingconsultant #entrepreneurtips #businessstrategy #growyourbusiness --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/businessbrospod/support

How do you build a loyal customer base? By giving them the best experience you can through great content. Mark Kilens is CMO at Airmeet, the all-in-one platform for your virtual and hybrid events and webinars.  He joins Daniel as they get into the weeds of how to start creating an experience for your audience, the importance of community, and how events can create communities. You'll also hear what Mark learnt as former VP of Content and Community at Drift and as VP of Hubspot Academy. And if you LOVE The Marketing Millennials drop us a five-star review at: https://ratethispodcast.com/marketingmillennials (https://ratethispodcast.com/marketingmillennials), I really appreciate your support!. Follow Mark: LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/markkilens (linkedin.com/in/markkilens) Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkKilens (twitter.com/MarkKilens) Keep up to date with the latest news from The Marketing Millennials:. Follow Daniel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dmurr68 (twitter.com/Dmurr68) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing (linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing)  Sign up to The Marketing Millennials newsletter: https://workweek.com/brand/the-marketing-millennials/ (workweek.com/brand/the-marketing-millennials)

There's a new way to create immersive and integrated events across the entire customer journey. Airmeet's Mark Kilens shares how organizations can discover, engage, and retain customers using event-led growth.

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Mark Kilens. Mark is the CMO of Airmeet, a leading virtual and hybrid event platform. He oversees Airmeet's global marketing team responsible for brand, demand, lifecycle, and product marketing. More About Mark Kilens: Twitter LinkedIn Take The Marketing Assessment: Marketingassessment.co This Duct Tape Marketing Podcast episode is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network and SEMRush.

In this episode of the HubHeroes podcast, we launch the conversation by talking about "starting with (Your) why". We chat about goals, KPIs, leadership, and what all that means when starting with the HubSpot software and the Inbound strategy.TRANSCRIPT OF THE SHOW:George B. Thomas (01:10):All right. Hub Heroes. That's right. We are here and we are ready. I'm super excited to be here on what we might call launch day of the league of extraordinary inbound superheroes. The future is bright my friends, the future is bright. Why you might ask? Because we're here to help you do inbound. HubSpot, content sales, heck you name it better, or at least not alone. Now first, before we jump into the good stuff, the conversation of the day, what do I mean by "we"? Well, I'm not alone on this fantastic journey. I have two other superheroes by my side. So let's meet them first. First up Devyn Bellamy. Devyn, you didn't know this was coming, but why don't you let the Hub Heroes listeners know a little bit about you, who you are, what you do, and maybe some information that we might find shocking or unique?Devyn Bellamy (02:02):No, I didn't know that it was coming. And I also didn't know that that intro was coming. I'm not cool enough to be brought in by any of that, but glad to be here. For those of you guys who don't know me, my name is Devyn Bellamy. I work at HubSpot. I work in partner enablement. I deal with partners, solutions partners who basically help customers grow better. Before that I was in the partner program myself, I've done onboarding, I've done strategy, I've built out who knows how many portals built HubSpot, CMS websites, tons of fun. And let's see a fun fact about me. I used to teach Kung Fu. That's an interesting tidbit.George B. Thomas (02:43):There we go. All right, next up, joining us for the high-flying adventure is Mr. Max Cohen. Max why don't you let the hub hero listeners know a little bit about you, who you are, and what you do. Man, this one scares me even giving you this opportunity, but a little tidbit of information that we might find shocking or unique.Max Cohen (03:05):Hey everybody, my name is Max Cohen. I am currently a Solutions or Senior Solutions engineer. I just got a promotion over at HubSpot. I've been at HubSpot for around six, going on six and a half-ish years right now. Did a lot of stuff from customer onboarding to learning and development as a product trainer. And now I'm on our sales team and it's super fun because I get to have really awesome conversations with customers and reps about HubSpot and the possibilities and all that fun stuff.Max Cohen (03:33):And I also just create a lot of content around inbound, marketing, sales, HubSpot, things like that. You could find me on TikTok if you haven't already. Maybe not a lot of people in the LinkedIn and like HubSpot universe may not know about me that my life outside of like HubSpot and inbound beyond being a dad of two wonderful daughters is I've played and coached competitive paintball since I was 15 years old. That's like another big half of me that like, I don't really talk too much about on LinkedIn. Because I don't really think people care too much about it. That's kind of the other side of me. And now that the pandemic is finally, hopefully over, I'll be getting back into a little bit of that instead of just sitting behind this desk all the time.George B. Thomas (04:14):Oh, we might have to get some video clips of that. Here's the thing, listeners, I want you to know hopefully you heard all of the years of experience years with HubSpot, and the nerdiness that is coming through. By the way, I'm George B. Thomas. I have been doing inbound in HubSpot since 2012. I've been training, doing onboarding, implementing, well, listen, my office is orange. My mic is orange, on any given day, I'm wearing orange to say that I love HubSpot and the people that use HubSpot is probably an understatement. By the way, the weird thing about me is I love peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. So you can chew on that one for a little.Devyn Bellamy (04:53):How long have you been pregnant?George B. Thomas (04:56):Oh wow. There's probably a joke there, but we'll move on. Because listeners you may have stumbled onto this podcast. You may have clicked on the link in the socials, but did you know that you have your very own Hall of Justice? That's right. You can head over to thehubheroes.com at any point to catch up on future or historical episodes, depending on where in the timeline you are listening to this hero episode.George B. Thomas (05:21):Also over at thehubheroes.com, you'll be able to join the League of Heroes, suggest an episode, and even see all the podcast apps and listening locations we're broadcasting to. So head over to thehubheroes.com and get what you need. One last thing we need to mention for you the community before we get into the topic of starting with why you need to know this. You, my friends, have a special hero signal at your fingertips. Kind of like the bat signal, anywhere on the socials at any point in time, you can use the hashtag, #hubheropodcast and we're going to come running. All right, here we go. Let's get into the good stuff and start the conversation starting with why turning humans into heroes, Devyn, Max, where do you guys want to start with this conversation on starting with why.Max Cohen (06:13):A lot of this kind of stems from why we wanted to get together and like do this podcast in the first place? Because the one thing that I think really kind of ties all of us together is in one way, shape or form, we were all HubSpot trainers or our HubSpot trainers, and still in some capacity HubSpot trainers, however, you want to shake that out. The most common question that I've gotten is, "All right, we have HubSpot, where do we begin?" Or we're starting to do inbound marketing. We're starting to do inbound sales. We're starting to do inbound in general. Where do we begin? And I think when we were talking about this a while ago and kind of coming up with like our first topics and ideas for this show, we called this episode starting with why, I think, for like a reason for me and Devyn and George, I want to hear like your takes on this too.Max Cohen (06:59):Five years ago, while HubSpot was kind of turning into a CRM or morphing into a CRM and it was still mostly a marketing tool, I think it was a little more obvious the answer of why are you getting started with HubSpot? And that was really to do inbound marketing. This is back when like inbound was just marketing. We didn't think of it as this more like an amorphous larger sort of business, an all-encompassing business strategy that is now inbound.Max Cohen (07:24):So I think a while ago, the starting with why the conversation was probably a little bit more narrow. But now that inbound is a strategy, HubSpot as a product does a lot more than just focus on marketing. Whenever you're getting started with any of it, ask yourself, why. Why are we getting into the idea of doing inbound? Why are we using a tool like HubSpot is the most important question you have to answer because HubSpot is a giant blank canvas.Max Cohen (07:50):Inbound could do many different things for you. It can touch a lot of places in your business. But for me when it comes down to starting with the mind, it's like, why are you getting into either deploying the strategy or using this tool? Because from there that's where you can start to think about like, "Hey, what are our first moves? What are our first steps? What are the things we want to think about when it comes to reporting? What are the problems we want to be able to solve for our business?" All that. And like, that's just kind of the question that I'll like turn around on. I'm curious before we dive too deep into it Devyn, what have those conversations looked like for you in the past? What have you told people in terms of like where to begin, things like that?Devyn Bellamy (08:26):The thing that I always explain, you put it great. It's a big blank canvas. It's a tool. And it can do so many things, but the question is what do you need it to do? And that's the biggest thing that you need to identify first. The first step to using HubSpot is not even opening HubSpot. It's you don't even log into your portal. What you need to do is identify a strategy that you want to do. Well, first you need to identify a goal, identify an objective that comes from identifying problems. So I'm going backward here. You start with the problem. Then you create a goal and then you figure out how you're going to get to that goal. And then you take HubSpot, bend it to your will, and then use that to accomplish your goal.Devyn Bellamy (09:23):For instance, if your goal is more leads, we'll start with a very simple one, using your website to get more leads. All right, great. Now you want to think about how you're attracting the content that you're going to put in. Because HubSpot is a tool, not a magic wand. You can't just turn it on. And then all of a sudden, "Oh my goodness, I'm being inundated with people who want to talk to me." That's not how it works. What you got to do is you have to come up with the content ideas and strategies, compelling something. That makes people want to interact with you. That makes people think that "You know what, this person's amazing."Devyn Bellamy (10:07):And then what you do is you use that to create a path that people can then convert. There's a technical term. We like to call it the conversion path. That's what you want to use. And that's just like the marketing aspect. And then you talk about CRM and sales and how you can get that interdepartmental cooperation and kumbaya alignment and all that fun stuff. That's why you start with a why. How can I use HubSpot better? No. How can you attract people better? How can you be awesome out there? And then how can the tool work for you?George B. Thomas (10:42):And I want to jump in here because I think there's so much good happening in this conversation. And I want to even go like a step before this. And I really want to take a moment to empower the listeners who might be listening to this before they even get HubSpot, or they just got HubSpot, and empower them from the Lord Lack of knowledge of why the crap, somebody just bought this tool and said, now use it and said good luck.George B. Thomas (11:09):Because what I want to empower them with is the ability to say the question you should be asking the people that are in the C-suite, the people who purchased the tool that looked at you and said, "You are the implementer." You should turn and say, why? What are we trying to achieve? Just like Devyn and Max said, what is the problem? What are the hurdles? What are the goals? What is the roadmap? What can I actually line out and look at the future, and gain a vision for where I'm trying to go.George B. Thomas (11:37):Because then another piece of what you gentlemen said, bend it to your will, mold it. I want everybody to be educated on the fact that HubSpot is not "Paint by Numbers". It's a box of Play Dough. You can literally pull it out and mold it with things like custom objects, custom properties, and views that you can actually make dependent upon how your team needs to use them. And it's not just this out-of-the-box, SAS, silver bullet software. "We're winning. We paid thousands of dollars and now we're like, make it rain." No.Max Cohen (12:16):We turned on the lead faucet!George B. Thomas (12:18):Yeah, no. We turned on the lead [inaudible 00:12:18]. No, it literally is this thing of we've got this tool. We have to build a roadmap. We have to customize it to our needs and it all does come back to why. Now with that understanding and empowering and educating these folks on this, my question is what are. And again, we may start with marketing. We may start with sales. We may talk about service. We might just talk about rev ops, which talks about all of them. What are these foundational elements or items that you historically have seen as trainers around inbound and HubSpot that you're like buy all that is holy, get this in place? Or think of this thing.Max Cohen (12:53):The funny part that I think a lot of people don't even consider is like, no matter what part if we were to kind of like take the basic parts of the inbound strategy, attract engaged delight, let's look at the big three parts of the methodology. Depending on how your business, your organization, whatever you are, depending on how you're doing and where the biggest pain points are in that whole cycle, you might be starting at different places.Max Cohen (13:16):What a lot of people don't think about is like, okay, what do we do if we get really, really good at that one piece of the puzzle? What sort of like downstream problems does that cause? So for example someone could be thinking like, all right, we're thinking about like a track here. Let's turn on the content machine. Let's get really smart at thinking about who our buyer personas are. Let's get really smart about generating demand with content. And let's think about what people are actually searching for online when they have certain problems and-George B. Thomas (13:44):Preach it, brother. Preach it.Max Cohen (13:46):Let's pretend you get really, really good at just attracting people, and maybe you're setting up some conversion paths. I know there are plenty of people today that believe in completely un-gating everything. And I think within inbound, there's even an argument for that too, but that's neither here nor there. Let's say you go and you're just collecting a whole bunch of leads because you created a lot of great content. It's like, cool. Now what? Are you just going to send them over to sales? You're creating all these people that are coming and they want to gather all your content, but you don't have any sort of plan of taking them from someone who's just built up enough trust in you and giving you their information. And like now what you're just going to send them over to sales? Because you didn't really think about what was going to happen in the in-between.Max Cohen (14:23):You didn't really think about how you were going to begin to like engage them. Or the marketing to sales handoff or anything like that. There's always going to be some sort of physics involved if you do really good at this, what is that going to mean downstream? If your sales team becomes extremely efficient. Maybe you get the sales hub and they start being able to communicate with a much higher volume of people at a much faster rate. And they're having a lot of great conversations and because they're not spending a bunch of time on administrative BS, maybe that means they're closing more customers and they're creating a lot more customers. That's awesome. But if you don't have like the customer service or the customer support infrastructure in place behind that, well then that's going to get really ugly really quick.Max Cohen (15:06):All your new customers are going to go back to your salespeople. Because you don't have a CX org in place in order to be able to help them when those people have questions or you don't have something like a knowledge base, that's going to help people self serve. Not only do you got to say like, "Hey, but this is also what we want to do to get started." You also need to like, think a little bit about, it's like, "Hey, let's say this goes well." What's the downstream physics of that mean for us? And do we have the ability to like an answer or solve those problems as they come up? And I'm not saying think 3, 4, 5, 7 steps ahead. But just say like, "Hey, here's our first initiative. If we do well, what does that mean?" And maybe there aren't any problems.George B. Thomas (15:45):Maybe there are six or seven steps ahead, but at least two. And Devyn, I'm going to kick it over to you here in a hot second. But I want to unpack something that hit my brain in HubSpot, like in life, best-case scenario, worst-case scenario. Have a backup plan for both of those. Because sometimes your best-case scenario, if it's too much of best is all of a sudden, a lot of friction or force in the wrong direction. By the way, the reason I kicked in here real quick is I want the listeners to know. And you two to know that I've gone over to our massive library of ideas for episodes, and we added inbound physics, as well as I, added this one Max, because of something you said to gates or not to gate, that is the question. That'll be a future episode. So back to the conversation at hand, Devyn, what are your thoughts on kind of what Max is unpacking and the direction that we're going?Devyn Bellamy (16:36):I think one of the biggest friction points that people are going to... Not going to the... Every day people deal with when implementing any system is an unwillingness to change. And that's either from an organizational standpoint or from just an individual standpoint. It could be something you're willing to do. One of the biggest mistakes that I've seen people make is let's say they've been working with MailChimp for years and then they get handed HubSpot. What they try and do is make HubSpot work like MailChimp. And it's like, don't do that. Stop it. Or when we talk about the sales process, what we do is we do all of this cool stuff. And then we export everything to spreadsheets for the sale... Don't do that. What you have to be willing to do is to adopt an entirely new process, an entirely new way of doing things.Devyn Bellamy (17:39):And I'm not just talking about going from a stick shift to automatic. I'm talking about going from bus to boat, sailboat. It's a completely different experience. And you're going to find that it requires a different set of skills and a different mindset in order to accomplish what it is that you're trying to accomplish.Devyn Bellamy (17:58):But the second thing, you not only need to have a C-suite buy-in. You need to have everything come from the top down. If you're an individual contributor or even a mid-level manager, you are not going to be able to initiate the change required in order to be successful with your new tools, because you can't tell one of your coworkers, "Hey, you have to do this thing now."Devyn Bellamy (18:23):Because they're going to tell you a certain number of expletives that may or may not result in them getting reported to HR. But if it comes from the top down that, "Hey, this is what we're using. This is the process that this person's created and we're going to do." If you can give feedback on it on whether or not you see issues with it. Great. But if you just want to have a total complaint fest, go, go ahead and do that self-channel in slack where you can just talk, because we're not here for that. That's not conducive to growth.George B. Thomas (18:55):Yeah. I'm not down with that party brother.Devyn Bellamy (18:57):Yeah. But the biggest thing is that in all of these things when we talk about the why, is that you have to understand that if you were awesome already, you wouldn't be doing this. You wouldn't be implementing the new tools if you were already dope at generating leads or you were already getting a whole bunch of sales through the pipeline and being able to accurately forecast what you need to do. If you were able to completely service everyone that comes in. If your website can tell you about who's seeing what and when and how interested they are, if you are already doing all of that stuff, you wouldn't need this.George B. Thomas (19:32):Yeah. And Max, at some point, we're going to need you to create your evil laugh, as a sound that we can use in the podcast. Because here's the thing, I feel like Lord Lack struck again. Devyn, in that first section you were literally talking about the lack of innovation and the lack of change. The ability to somehow when it's the worst-case scenario be stuck in who you are and what you've been doing for the last five years, knowing that it's not working, which by the way is insanity.George B. Thomas (20:01):The other thing is too, that I want to unpack that second part and where my brain went. And what I heard is that yes, it has to come from the top-down, but I'm going to give you a little super-secret tip. You can be a leader without being a leader. Meaning you might be the person in the middle and you've been told to implement HubSpot.George B. Thomas (20:22):You can lead the leaders in what you need them to say to the people around you, below you, whatever. So it does come to the top, even though, think of it a little bit, not in a bad way as the [inaudible 00:20:36] of getting the buy-in, getting the verbiage, getting the things that you need to be successful, for your team to be successful. So don't get hung up on this, "Well, I'm just this." As soon as you hear yourself say just no, just nothing. You can be a leader, even though you might not be a leader. Where else does your mind go on this topic of starting with why, when it comes to inbound and HubSpot and all that good stuff.Max Cohen (21:00):I wanted to kind of like hop on that thread Devyn that you were talking about getting the buy-in from leadership to be able to make big changes like this because let's not bullshit around it. Going from a company that's doing completely outbound everything. Buying paid media and TV shows or commercials or ads in the newspaper or billboards and sending out physical mail and just cold calling everybody until all your sales reps burn out. Saying, "Hey, we're going to stop doing all those things that we've been doing for so long. And we're going to try this whole inbound thing."Max Cohen (21:35):I mean that's a very tricky conversation. If that initiative isn't coming from the top. But let's say you're a marketer. You're someone in sales and you realize that the current tactics are causing problems or stunting growth, or just making it really difficult for you to grow the business in the way that you want to.Max Cohen (21:53):How do you approach that conversation with those folks who are able to make those decisions? And I think the whole idea around like, starting with why is kind of pertinent here because you can start by saying like, why are the way we do things right now not working? Or why is the way we're doing things right now, not working? And kind of be able to call that out. I think that is either really easy or not so easy to kind of like identity in your organization. If you haven't educated yourself in the other ways of doing things. And when I'm saying the other ways of doing things, I'm talking more about inbound and demand generation and really leading with content and things like that versus what your company may have already been doing for so long.Max Cohen (22:35):And I think that could be a pretty daunting task for that marketer that's seen the light or that salesperson that's seen the light, being like, "Oh, these leads are kind of crappy or cold calling people all day kind of sucks. Or these people don't really come to me thinking that we can solve a problem already. It's really hard."Max Cohen (22:51):I guess what would be your advice for that person, who's trying to drive that change management in terms of like getting themselves educated so they can either pitch the idea of change or get people on board with it before you even think about it... Because at the end of the day, it's not about buying a piece of software. It's not about buying HubSpot. It's about deciding that you're going to change the way that your marketing sales and service organization operates. How would you coach someone who's kind of feeling a little bit intimidated by a task like that? Like where would you tell them to start?George B. Thomas (23:26):First of all, I'm just jumping in here real quick, and then I'm going to kick it back to you Devyn for a second. But I have to say if when you purchase HubSpot, it doesn't change your ecosystem or destroy your echo chamber then you are probably not going to be headed in the right direction.Max Cohen (23:43):True.George B. Thomas (23:43):And if I could wave a magic inbound wand over everybody, I would make certifications and HubSpot Academy education mandatory. Either one on one, but even better as a group. Every Friday at 12:00 bring your fricking lunch. We're going to do this one hour of training because you need to know the methodology, the religion, then let's go amen of why the freak we're using this expensive... Oh, I'm sorry, HubSpot is not an expensive, but a very valuable tool and not just let it lay there on the shelf. So education is the key. It is the life chamber. It is the thing that will breathe oxygen into new ideas, new strategies, new things that you want to push forward as a company, I'll stop. Get off my soap box. Devyn, what are your thoughts?Devyn Bellamy (24:37):Well, I'm going to hop right back on my change management soap box, buddy. Here's the thing, getting people to do a thing that they are uncomfortable with. Getting people to get out of their comfort zone is annoying and it sucks. One of the things that are worked for me is getting someone else to come in, like an outsider, a consultant. And having them set the change because like the Christian says, Jesus wasn't even accepted at home. Why would you expect that you would be?Devyn Bellamy (25:05):The thing is that if you bring in someone else to work on it and to document and implement, and keyword document as a part of implementing this change, people can go back and refer to it. Then that helps. Even if you're the expert, even if you are the absolute go-getter, boss hog, when it comes to HubSpot, the fact that they will respect an outside before they respect yours, sometimes that's the case.Devyn Bellamy (25:33):But the other thing is just setting the expectation that everything is changing. Normally I'm all about parallel testing and gradual transition, but this is like changing from driving on the left side of the road to driving on the right side of the road. You can't gradually change that. That's just something that one day, this is what we're going to switch over to, and this is how it's going to happen.Devyn Bellamy (26:00):And we're going to migrate all this data from the old thing to the new thing. And this is what it's going to do. If you can't handle that, regardless of how much of a rockstar you are within the organization, if you can't handle, there are going to be consequences and repercussions. And so you can lead with the carrot, but there's got to be some stick behind it. This is why I talk about getting buy-in from management and C-suite and then George hit it right on the head with managing up.Devyn Bellamy (26:29):You have to empower leadership to enable these changes because they don't know what they're doing. That's what they hired you for. If you can make these changes, it would be great. But the other cool thing about the systems is that you can set up and automate and then give a demonstration on why this is so cool and why this is going to make their lives so much easier and get them excited about the new change. Point out, "Hey, here's why you suck right now. And here's how you can stop sucking." And people will be excited about not sucking anymore, even if it means that they have to learn something new or do something different.George B. Thomas (27:07):Yeah. I love this. Max, I'm going to kick it back to you here in a second, but the idea... There are two things running through my head. This last point that you just made about the only way that where you can go is knowing where you're at and if where you're at is suck and what you want is a success. You have to know those two points to move forward.George B. Thomas (27:27):The other thing is, I want everybody to know, that this is why I am so excited about this podcast because ladies and gentlemen, I want you to realize we just had a Jesus reference, and a Dukes of hazard reference in the same clip from my man, Devyn Bellamy. It was the boss hog. And it's hard to be a prophet in your own town. I'm just super excited. Max, let's continue down this journey of why. Now for me, where I start to go is like, should we share why we got excited about inbound? Why do we decide to make it part of our lives, and why do we decide to train and implement it? Or if you want to take another direction, we totally can do that too.Max Cohen (28:11):What got me super excited about inbound, man, I'm like really trying to kind of go back and think about my experience as a sales rep at Apple, before I came here. We want to know how we got leads. When I was working at the Apple store as a business sales rep? When people came into the store to buy something. Could be a personal item, could be anything. If on their receipt, we saw that they had a business email, we would then try to reach out to them and call them. And that was excruciating.Max Cohen (28:42):And though the wild thing that I noticed was when we would do workshops, where we would actually talk about educated topics around how to use Apple products in your business, we would one get people showing up that actually cared. And then two show people that we knew what we were talking about and we could be trusted advisors.Max Cohen (29:04):And all of the leads I got from those ended up turning into great relationships. Who would've thought? And that kind of like proved to me how important it is to build trust with your marketing or whatever emotion you go through to capture leads, generate demand, and get interested. I know those are different things, but they're also very closely related.Max Cohen (29:23):I think that the big thing too, is just I hated cold calling so much. I just thought cold calling was just a weird thing to do. At the end of the day, if you think about the physics of what's happening there, it's you calling someone up, not because you care about their wellbeing or helping them, you just want to sell something. And that just didn't sit well with me. Do you know what I mean? I always thought there has to be a better way of generating folks who are interested in talking to salespeople in a way that doesn't totally suck.Max Cohen (29:54):And to me when I finally started learning about what inbound really was, and that was really only when I started working at HubSpot, I had gotten inbound certified when I was in college. And that's when I first heard about inbound. But the way that I understood it at the beginning was that, oh, it's just how you use social media, which I was completely wrong about. But what I really like understood is, hey, content's what drives everything. It's all about building trust through the content you produce and really doing all the legwork to build trust and generate demand for your product before someone even talks to a sales rep. That to me just felt like a much more human, wholesome way of marketing. Because even if people aren't buying stuff from you, you're still putting like good out there into the universe because there are plenty of people that can take your advice.Max Cohen (30:39):Things, you talk about the content you create and go out and solve the problems that they have on their own. And that's awesome if you do that, it's tactically awesome for a number of different reasons, which I'm sure we'll kind of dive into more depth as we kind of continue this series. That's what got me super stoked about it. Is that you could do marketing in a way that had a good benefit, not only for your customer but also for your other internal customers your sales reps, and stuff. You could send people to them that was actually excited to talk to them. Or actually wanted to talk to them or already had a certain amount of trust going into that relationship. And I've been a sales rep and a non-inbound situation. And no one likes that. That's kind of what got me jazzed up about it at the beginning.Devyn Bellamy (31:18):For me, long story short, it helped me make a lot of people's money and it in turn made me a lot of money. For me what happened was I discovered HubSpot by accident. I was doing a website redesign for the company I was working for and entry-level marketer, even though I have way above entry-level skills, having no degree in coming off of over a decade in radio, people are going to treat you like you don't know what you're talking about. And I didn't sound intelligent at all. When I talked about marketing, I would just try and explain concepts that I had reversed engineered from these multibillion-dollar organizations like McDonald's. I wouldn't have given me money. What ended up happening is the CEO asked me to create the website and I asked him what websites he likes.Devyn Bellamy (32:09):He's like, "HubSpot has a really cool-looking website." I'm like, all right. And I went and checked out websites and I'm like, wow, that is cool. But then I started looking at the content. I'm like, wow, that is cool. And then I got the inbound certification and got invited to a Grow With HubSpot event in Philly and met James Stone, who is still to this day one of my favorite HubSpotters. I really fell in love with the people first.Devyn Bellamy (32:35):And then they actually... He and Andrew Fargnoli actually helped me create a marketing deck that explained financially why we suck and why we could be better in marketing. And it worked. And so not only was I able to speak intelligently, thanks to HubSpot Academy, but I was able to get C-suite buy-in thanks to these awesome hub spotters. And then not only that, but I was able to follow through and knock it out of the park.Devyn Bellamy (33:03):With their help, I was able to set KPIs and identify our goals could be. And then we knocked them out of the park in the first quarter, just off of an ebook campaign because it was killer content. My favorite thing was getting promoted past my boss and becoming his boss just off of using HubSpot effectively. And working on the system after identifying the goals, it was magical. That was like six years ago, almost seven years ago. And I've kind of been writing the HubSpot, orange rocket ever since. And it's been amazing as HubSpot's grown, as the sales tools launched, as the business model has completely changed and the hubs have completely changed, I've grown with it now. My life is pretty dope. I get to buy talking Deadpool heads and stuff like that.George B. Thomas (33:59):I love it. And here's the thing earlier I got really excited about education and you'll see why I get excited about education. Why it really is a passion point. Why I believe I'll be a HubSpot trainer until the day I die is because education is key. And honestly, I tell people, I think HubSpot found me, I didn't find HubSpot. And in 2012 HubSpot Academy did this thing called the world's largest webinar. Our social media guy, small agency, four people, Madison, Ohio. Our social media guy comes running in, he says, "Hey, there's this company called HubSpot. They're doing this thing called the world's largest webinar." We're like, "Ooh, what?" He's like, "I think we should watch it." So we go out to the conference table, we got it on the big screen TV. We're watching the webinar and we hear, I believe it was Mark Kilens at this point, say, "We're going to give away 10 free tickets to the top 5% of tweeters."George B. Thomas (34:52):And John, our social media guy, his fingers are on fire. We're just tearing it up. Zach and I are just sitting back like okay, let's check this out. Long story short, we win two tickets. Zach and I go to Boston for the first time. I hear Gary Vaynerchuk speak. By the way, ladies and gentlemen, before this, I was a designer-developer, six-pack and a pizza come in and a website comes out the other side. Don't talk to me, leave me alone.George B. Thomas (35:18):2012, I go, "I want to be a marketer when I grow up." And I'm like, I know nothing about marketing. We come back September 2012, we get HubSpot for the agency. I start attending webinars. I get one certification. One becomes three, three becomes six, six becomes 12, 12 becomes 21, and 21 becomes 38. HubSpot Academy certification is literally multiple, probably college degrees based on HubSpot Academy education.George B. Thomas (35:47):It ends up enabling me to get a job in the sales line, which then enables me to become a professional speaker, which then enables me to onboard companies that if you asked me in 2012, will you ever talk to employees of these types of companies? I'd be like, no. But I've been able to do that because of education. And this is why when I said a while ago, I would make education mandatory because if you can learn what you don't know to implement what you need, your future will be bright.George B. Thomas (36:16):I need you to rewind that part of the podcast because there's a key to life and a key to hub spot and a key to inbound in that last 15 seconds. Now here, I'm going to tie it all together. The reason I fell in love, why with this whole journey was because in 2012 HubSpot was preaching don't call me a customer. I'm a human. The reason why your company has HubSpot, the reason, the way that you should focus on your why. The reason, why you should go past your hurdles and head towards your aspirations is because of the humans that you are serving. The humans that you are helping pass their hurdles with the content and the strategy and the sales that yes at the end of the day ends up being revenue. But in reality, was life-changing to those people around you.Devyn Bellamy (37:10):Yeah. What he said, all of that. That's the thing I think HubSpot Academy is one of the most game-changing things people can bring into their lives. It's constantly expanding. I mean, even beyond the certifications, the gems that are in just the straight courses. If you just take the time, I remember I spent a week. It was like over the course of a week or two weeks, I got every HubSpot certification that became available.Devyn Bellamy (37:39):And I came out of the other side of that, a completely different marketer. When I would go to inbound every year and I would go to the breakout session. I literally just did a speaking engagement at a conference in Wisconsin. Shout out to everybody at Experience Inbound. I did a breakout on email deliverability and everything that I spoke about, everything I said, I either learned through HubSpot academy or I picked it up from different years of going to inbound. It's like people you said, I never... Five, or six years ago I never would've imagined giving a talk to professionals about email deliverability. Being the guy on the stage, talking about email deliverability. And just having that... I went to college for a music education. This is not at all how I pictured my life being. And if you do nothing else, get on academy.hubspot.com.Max Cohen (38:40):If this is the last episode of the podcast you listen to. The next thing you should do is just spend your time at HubSpot Academy. And here's the other thing I think we hear a lot lately just with how everything is crazy with the economy and crazy with the job market, all this stuff, you hear a lot of people talking about the idea of like breaking into tech. I think there's also this concept of like breaking into the HubSpot universe. HubSpot Academy, which by the way is free, for anyone listening to this that isn't familiar with HubSpot academy yet all of this educational content, lessons, tracks, courses, and certifications are free. Free, free, free, free, free.Devyn Bellamy (39:15):Free. All the way free.George B. Thomas (39:17):Did you say they're free?Max Cohen (39:19):They're free.George B. Thomas (39:20):They're free right?Max Cohen (39:21):They don't cost currency. They're free. What's wild is sure, you work at your company. You want to learn more about inbound. It's not just a HubSpot product. Yes, you can go in there and you can get certified on the product. But the majority of the stuff in there is all about strategy, which is product agnostic. Let's say you want to break into the HubSpot universe. That's a great way to get started. But then something to keep in mind. This is great. If you want to work at a company that's using HubSpot or just deploying inbound. If you want to work at a HubSpot partner or agency or some kind of company like that. Because there is lots of folks in there that are helping HubSpot customers, deploying HubSpot, running inbound marketing campaigns, managing their entire portal and their whole setup, and everything.Max Cohen (40:09):And hey, maybe also you could be a freelancer. You could start your own agency or you could even come work for a HubSpot one day like Devyn's doing now as well. And he started with HubSpot Academy. There is this massive ecosystem and universe surrounding this whole HubSpot thing for folks who are looking for a career change, and you don't need to go back to college to do this. You don't need to go to college if you haven't gone to college before to do this.Max Cohen (40:39):All of the education that you need to break into this wonderful community, massive universe. And there's this whole idea of the rise of the HubSpot admin now. That's becoming a thing. It's all just kind of sitting there right in front of you with this HubSpot Academy. So like don't sleep on that. Go check that out. Because if you're listening to this podcast, because maybe you just got put in charge of this HubSpot thing, or you just bought HubSpot recently and you're realizing maybe it's a little bit more difficult than I anticipated Academy is the greatest place for you to start.Max Cohen (41:11):I promise you if you're looking at HubSpot right now and you're looking up at the navigation and you're just like, "Wow, that's a lot of words. That's a lot of tools. That's a lot of stuff." If you just go get your inbound certification, all of it will start to make sense. The thing that a lot of people don't put together, especially folks that are evaluating HubSpot for the first time, or new to the community, new to the product or the strategy, whatever, is that there are two things. There's an inbound strategy. And then there is the HubSpot product.Devyn Bellamy (41:43):Yes.Max Cohen (41:42):The HubSpot product is built to deploy the inbound strategy. You could do the inbound strategy without HubSpot. Is it a pain in the butt because it involves tons of different tools and cobbling together a whole bunch of systems in order to do it? Yes, it's a pain in the butt, but that's what HubSpot solves. But again, every single part of HubSpot and how it's all built together to be one piece of software that does all of this stuff, it's all meant to kind of support this inbound methodology, flywheel, attract, engage, and delight, whatever you want to call it. It's built to support that inbound strategy, the two work best together.Devyn Bellamy (42:14):The last thing, just to tie together this whole episode is the hardest thing about using HubSpot or any tool for that matter is the strategy. The hardest thing about any of it is the content, the strategy is the why.Max Cohen (42:32):Yep.Devyn Bellamy (42:32):If you can figure out a why and then create a plan to solve those problems. That you are diving into at that point, the HubSpot user interface becomes extremely simple. Because there are so many different moving parts to HubSpot you might not ever use. There are a lot of tools in HubSpot that are available that may not be applicable to the goal that you're trying to solve. And that's okay. Everything within it is exceedingly powerful. The tools that you are going to use, even if you just use a fraction of the Hub that you got in order to accomplish the goal that you've set, you're going to see remarkable benefits.Devyn Bellamy (43:21):And I'm not just saying that because I bleed orange. I'm saying that because it's made me a lot of money over the years doing that. Being able to know the strategy the way I do, being able to be a strategist, being able to come up with a plan for success, all across the organizations, not just in marketing. That is what allows me to look at HubSpot and say, "Okay, I'm going to take this tool. I'm going to take this tool. I'm going to take this tool, and take this tool. I'm going to put together all of this and do something dope." And then people are going to look at it. I'm going to regenerate reports. The C-suite's going to love me. And then I'm going to get a pay raise.George B. Thomas (43:58):Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, the one thing I'm going to say to end this episode, whether it be HubSpot Academy, whether it be listening to future episodes of this podcast in your mind, simply put this. 1% better each and every day. Don't get overwhelmed by the massive wall, but enjoy the journey along though way. 

How many Hubspot Academy certifications did you take? Personally, I've been on that journey too many times to remember the actual numbers. It's impressive how a company can build an amazing brand by putting out a tremendous amount of value for free (and getting top dollar in ROI in return). My guest for today's episode of Coffee with Closers is the man who actually created Hubspot Academy - from idea to execution. Meet Mark Kilens, the VP of Content and Community at Drift where he leads the content, creative, and events teams. Prior to joining Drift, he served as VP of Marketing and founder of HubSpot Academy. “To build an enduring brand or a great community, you need to have values and principles,” says Mark. “You need to have the sense of ownership, belonging, accountability, and self-identification that you can use to identify with this larger group of people.” Stay tuned for our conversation with Mark where he shares insights about brand building and breaks down the value of conversational marketing for a business. Coming up: ►How to create demand for different product categories? ►Why is it important to have a people-centric approach if you want to build something great? ►What is conversational marketing and how to use it to create a better customer experience? ►What do marketers need to be focused on these days? ►Is the MQL dead and how to reinvent your website so it is more appealing to the customers? Enjoy! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ►Find Mark Kilens on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/markkilens/ ►Visit Drift at https://www.drift.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This series is brought to you by OneIMS - a leading digital marketing agency helping businesses win new customers. ►Request your FREE marketing ROI audit at https://www.oneims.com/ ►Subscribe to our channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/oneims ►Listen to our podcast https://open.spotify.com/show/0rq9sO5hIdnMlsY3M7jqYf?si=fLmIEu88QMi6QFU8p6h_Gw ►Visit our website here: https://www.oneims.com/ ►Follow OneIMS online: Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/OneIMS/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/oneims/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oneims/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/oneims?lang=en

Community is a hot topic at the moment. And for good reason — it's a strong and proven strategy for sustainable growth. Mark Kilens is the OG of community-led growth. He founded HubSpot Academy and has built Drift's Insider community into the powerhouse that it is today. I'm thrilled to share this conversation with you. Mentioned in the show: ✨ Transcript with Key Takeaways ✨ Connect with Mark on LinkedIn and Twitter ✨ Drift Insider ✨ Community Sense podcast

How do you leverage user-generated content to scale your content quickly? Mark Kilens founded HubSpot Academy, the #1 source of inbound marketing education. Since then, he joined Drift and grew their Insider community to over 50,000 members. One of the ways he scaled these communities—and therefore their brands—was through user-generated content. He shares how you can enable your communities to create content in this episode of The Content Callout.Outline of This Episode[2:02] Why Mark created Hubspot academy[6:10] How to create massive amounts of content[8:11] Partner with your customers to market your brand[11:05] Learn more about Drift Insider[14:55] Content needs to be integrated across verticals [20:56] How to connect with Mark KilensResources & People MentionedGet 50% Drift's event on March 16th Flash Miami 2022 using code: MARKKILENS50The Community Sense podcastConnect with Mark KilensDrift InsiderConnect on LinkedInFollow on TwitterText Mark at 978-226-6965Connect with The Content Callouthttps://www.contentcallout.com/Subscribe to The Content Callout onApple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts

A robust product education strategy is like an onion. It has many layers depending on where the customer is at in their product journey. When done correctly, product education will drive growth for both your customer and your business. On this episode of Growth, Matt sits down with Mark Kilens, Drift's VP of Content and Community and one of the founding members of both Drift Insider and Hubspot Academy. Matt and Mark discuss how to first approach a product education strategy, the importance of cross-pollination between product teams and content marketing teams, and if certifications should be part of your education strategy.Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends! You can connect with Matt and Mark on Twitter @MattBilotti, @MarkKilens, and @DriftPodcasts.

Mark Kilens is the VP of Content and Community at Drift where he oversees content, creative projects, events, teams, and much more. He also oversees the Drift community and Drift Insider–which has about 45,000 members today–as well as their two biggest events, Rev Growth and Hyper Growth. In this episode, Alan and Mark break down Drift's 2021 State of Conversational Marketing report. They also talk about what conversational marketing is, how Drift approaches it, and how marketers need to think about conversation as they build their marketing and sales enablement functions. Later in the interview, Alan and Mark discuss how Drift is a unique brand and also how Mark sees content service and education actually helping to drive their marketing efforts. Listen to the full conversation to hear more about how to implement a holistic conversational strategy for marketing and sales. What's part of the secret sauce? The buyer should be at the center of everything you do. In this episode, you'll learn: The state of conversational marketing The importance of focusing on the buyer How to use AI efficiently in your sales journey Key Highlights [01:38] Mark invented a snow-making machine [04:11] Mark's path to becoming VP of Content and Community [07:09] The State of Conversation Marketing report [09:36] The need to use digital marketing tools and techniques [13:00] Why you should keep the buyer at the center [17:14] What marketing looks like in the conversational commerce [21:00] Showing your personality through AI [24:41] Why Drift cares about investing in content [28:12] How content education plays into the lifecycle of a customer [32:21] An experience that makes Mark who he is today [34:21] Mark's advice to his younger self [35:37] What marketers should be learning more about [39:50] The brands and organizations Mark follows [41:24] The biggest threat and opportunity for marketers Resources Mentioned: Mark Kilens Drift HKD Snowmakers 2021 State of Conversational Marketing Report Adobe case study using Drift David Cancel, CEO of Drift on Marketing Today Dave Gerhardt, CMO of Drift, Interview on Marketing Today when at Privy RevGrowth Virtual Summit Follow the podcast: Listen in iTunes (link: http://apple.co/2dbdAhV) Listen in Google Podcasts (link: http://bit.ly/2Rc2kVa) Listen in Spotify (Link: http://spoti.fi/2mCUGnC) Connect with the Guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markkilens/ https://twitter.com/MarkKilens https://twitter.com/drift Connect with Marketing Today and Alan Hart: http://twitter.com/abharthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/alanhart http://twitter.com/themktgtodayhttps://www.facebook.com/themktgtoday/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketing-today-with-alan-hart/ Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/marketingtoday See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For many B2B SaaS companies, conversations are the ultimate success metric. When customers directly engage with you, relationships are established and, as important, the sales journey is jump-started. On this episode of Marketing Spark, Mark Kilens, Drfit's VP of Content & Community, talks about how conversation marketing gained momentum last year at a time when conferences disappeared. Drift pioneered conversation marketing with the introduction of an AI-powered chatbot that attempts to engage, understand and recommend solutions. Mark and I also talk about Drift's approach to content marketing, the importance of content distribution, and some of the metrics used to assess content marketing success.

Mark Kilens is the VP of Marketing and Community at Drift. In this episode, we talk about mapping content marketing initiatives to revenue goals, marketing as the hub for internal engagement, and L&D as part of the marketing remit.

Today's episode is a special one as we welcome guest Mark Kilens, VP of Content and Community at Drift, to the show. You'll receive expert insights into the topics of revenue acceleration, building insights from data, and community. We are so excited to share this episode with you all, and thank you Mark for joining us.If you'd like to follow Mark you can do so in these locations:  Twitter: @MarkKilens LinkedIn: Mark Kilens If you'd like to be featured in upcoming episodes, let us know what your question is on Twitter @DemandCreator or email our Podcast Producer at hannah@imaginellc.comAnd if you want to watch the video recording of this episode, you can do so athttps://blog.imaginellc.com/theblackline/revenue-acceleration and follow us on Twitter @dougdavidoff, @knowingwhen & @DemandCreator.

I sit down with Mark Kilens, who is VP of Content and Community at Drift where he leads the content, events, community, and learning and development teams. He oversees Drift's content strategy, Drift Insider (35,000+ members), L&D functions, and Drift's RevGrowth and HYPERGROWTH events. Prior to joining Drift, he served as VP and founder of HubSpot Academy. As an enthusiastic former customer, Mark joined HubSpot in 2010 as an Inbound Marketing Consultant, where he spent two years working with thousands of HubSpot customers to scale their inbound strategy. Text Mark at 978-226-6965

Mark Kilens is the VP of Content & Community at Drift, and in this episode, Mark and I discuss the content and community equation, why he hires for character and trains for skill and his personal operating system.

Alice speaks to Mark Kilens, VP of content and Community @Drift about the truth behind Drift's content machine and how to do it. In this episode, Alice and Mark talk about how to scale content with a small team, what types of content to focus on right now, how to use content to build a ‘remarkable' brand and more. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/cognism/message

Mark Kilens, VP of Content and Community at Drift, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Drift was founded in 2015, has ~400 people, and is based out of Boston, MA. They've raised Series C ($107M total). Drift helps companies (specifically, marketing and sales) engage in real-time, personalized conversations so they can build trust and accelerate revenue. Drift combines chat, email, video, and automation to remove the friction from business buying and make it more enjoyable and human. They came up with the categories “conversational marketing” and “revenue acceleration” and just announced a year of record-breaking growth. Here's what we hit on: 3 different eras and the evolution of brand, demand gen, and now a revenue focus across marketing and sales; What are the pain points that sales/marketing teams have where Drift comes in; Sales/marketing team alignment vs. actioning; How the marketing team is structured inside Drift - the hub of the customer experience AND employee experience; What makes Drift unique (from other martech SaaS companies); What marketing channels are working really well for Drift (e.g. LinkedIn, virtual events); How to think about SEO in an effective way - narrow targeting and entertaining media formats; LinkedIn marketing means using the power of real people within your business; Drift on gating content (HINT: they don't); Just because someone reads your content does not mean they're qualified - what else matters; Drift's marketing challenges (e.g. expansion, focus, etc.); You can't just buy martech and expect revenue to follow - need the strategy; Some of Mark's best marketing ideas (micro-content, reposition your content to different audiences); The vast majority of websites suck because they serve the marketer vs. customer; How Mark stays creative. You can find Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markkilens/ Find out more about Drift: www.drift.com For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/anna-furmanov/message

You wouldn't let a paying customer wander around your store for an hour before you helped them, so why should your website be any different? In this episode, MK learns from Mark Kilens, VP of Content and Community at Drift, about ways to optimize your website for PX. --- Don't forget to follow Alyce on Twitter for Office Hours Updates @Alycegifts If you want to be the first to know when we drop a new episode, subscribe for updates here: http://alyce.gift/OH-pod

Community & content at Drift with Mark Kilens, VP of content & community In this episode we discuss with Mark about: ✔️ Why should companies invest in building communities? ✔️ What has been the biggest challenges & learnings from building Drift insiders? ✔️Certifications as part of content & community marketing? ✔️ Three most important questions that will serve as the foundation of your content and community strategy: 1) What stage is your business? 2) Who is your audience? 3) How do they buy your product? ✔️ And many more...

Mark Kilens in the VP of Content and Community at Drift. In this episode, we talk about the intersection of content and community, learn about the skills needed to become a VP and talk about Mark's early days at Hubspot. You can connect with Mark on LinkedIn and Twitter. Check out Drift Insider to see all the resources we talked about.

It's makeover time. In this live show, CEO and Co-founder of Directive, Garrett Mehrguth, and a SaaS marketing leader work together to build an on-the-spot strategy for a recognizable SaaS brand - as quickly as possible. Today's guest, Drift's VP of Content and Community Mark Kilens!

There's a problem with the way we've been taught to market and sell—it no longer matches how buyers actually buy things.Think about it—when you're not talking to someone face-to-face, where do most of your conversations happen? Yup, that's right—they happen over messaging channels like iMessage, Messenger, Slack, WhatsApp, etc. People love communicating with messaging because it's fast, easy, and actually feels like a conversation—but most business (and enrollment teams!) are still forcing people to jump through endless hoops before a conversation can ever take place (looking at you, inquiry form!).Enter chatbots and conversational marketing. On this week's episode, Zach sits down with Mark Kilens, the VP of Content and Community at Drift (the first ever conversational marketing platform), to discuss how colleges and universities can attract, engage, and delights prospects, applicants, and students with conversational marketing strategies. Tune in for an incredibly inspiring and insightful chat about the future of student recruitment and strategic enrollment marketing — and why conversational marketing is especially pertinent for this next academic year.

Mark Kilens leaving HubSpot Academy? HubSpot Ventures investing millions in startups? Man are we starting off this year with some stuff! Tune in to hear us dive into the Lead Status property, a major wishlist item, and some juicy New Year's product updates.