Trey Morris

🛑STOP SCROLLING🛑 This is one of those things that very few realize. The risk here is REAL. In the new TCPA world, these components of lead gen MUST be documented to maintain compliance, and mitigate MASSIVE fines. Are you tracking this data?

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For the love of all things demand gen, you cannot have it both ways! If you're not seeing ROI from events, you're doing events wrong, period. As I see it, there are two approaches to that get attention at trade shows: (1) Scrappy, guerilla marketing that takes advantage of the right people all being in the same place (like what Tim did for Directive, or what Anthony did for Delve Risk, or even what WE did at RSA for Endor Labs!) ORRRR 2) Go BIG and be creative - with the investment in space and concept to make this work (S/O to Valerie at JupiterOne, and of course we all know and love Wiz year after year) Anything in between is noise. Your 10x10 booth with the boring corporate backdrop is not going to cut it, sorry (not sorry). Pia Rodil has leveled up our events program DRAMATICALLY, and personally impacted my view on trade shows and sponsorships. Can we all put the "events are a waste of budget" narrative to rest already?

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In this 90-minute session, presented by Pam Perdue and Kimberly Boatwright, CAMS, CRCM,FLE, we’ll dive into how your institution’s digital marketing efforts could be causing major redlining issues and what you can do to mitigate those risks. 🗺💰 ✨ Streaming live May 23rd, you’ll come away from this session understanding how digital marketing practices can violate fair lending laws. Together, we’ll discuss: - The increasing risk of digital redlining. - Recent enforcement actions related to digital marketing and redlining. - Which internal policies and procedures you need to pay particular attention to. - Tips for working with the marketing department to appropriately address common pitfalls. 📌 learn more here: https://lnkd.in/eRkHF57s #Redlining #RegulatoryCompliance #Compliance #ComplianceResource

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Thanks to Niels van Melick for inviting me on the B2B Marketing Done Right podcast to talk all things content marketing -- from breaking down silos within an organization to making decisions around gating content. I especially love this clip about sharing wins internally. Huge shout out to Christina Kyriazi, the MVP at internal marketing who taught me everything I know. Check out the episode here: https://lnkd.in/ebubJj5H

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That's it. That's my hot take of the day. "Nobody wants to chug a bottle of Sriracha." Also, that most of my hot takes can be set to John Hughes movie memes. I LOVED chatting with MK Getler-Porizkova about how to build a connected brand. From the first time someone meets you to the whateverth time they renew their subscription with you. We talked about: - The connection between your content and your values, and how to keep that link tight - How to ACTUALLY center the user as the hero in your content - When to say "we" and when and how to shift the focus to "you" - What an "emotional status update" is and why to avoid it at all costs - How to make content consistent across the whole user journey, silos and swimlanes be damned And yes, we talked about delight in product content. Oh boy. Let's spice it up.

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Just because you're in a specific industry, doesn't mean you should get marketing inspo from that industry. In fact... I'd recommend you don't look at other brands in your industry, or you'll blend in with everyone else. Thought about this after a conversation yesterday with Michelle Wong about where we get our inspo as tech/security/B2B marketers. I realized I listed off an NFL team, cereal brand, NPS, car insurance, and various illustrative comics... but not a single tech/security brand. And I'm still not sure I could name a tech/security brand that inspires me 😅 Can you? #MSP #managedservices #techmarketing

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Does your CEO really want to know how many MQLs and SQLs your marketing produced this month? Probably not. Today's marketing playbook vastly differs from the one that worked so well two years ago, including what gets reported internally. I was recently invited to speak to the Arizona Innovation Marketing Association, and I chose to discuss how my marketing playbook has changed. In my talk, which I titled, "The Rebellion of ROI: Why It's Time to Throw Out Traditional Marketing Playbooks," I shared five game-changing shifts forcing a complete rethink of the playbooks we used two, even five years ago. And the first big shift is to admit your CEO doesn't care about MQL's or SQL's. I call it a shift because they used to care about them. Not that long ago, marketing teams were being told Sales needs more "top of funnel LEADS." So Marketers created a bunch of gated assets and threw a gazillion "Marketing-Qualified Leads" over the wall to Sales. Except they quickly learned that someone downloading an eBook is almost never ready to book a sales demo. And in the end, while Marketing could claim success by generating thousands of leads, CEO's and CFO's were focused on driving revenue, not leads. This led to questions like "so how many leads do we need to produce $X in revenue?" In Q2 of last year, I stopped reporting lead numbers. The traditional "MQL" was simply too disconnected from revenue. At the same time, we also took the radical step of ungating all of our assets, which naturally caused our lead count to plunge. Instead, I shifted to reporting inbound pipeline and outbound pipeline produced through marketing outreach efforts (our SDR sits in Marketing, not Sales). The only leading indicator we report is inbound demo requests. Guess what? I've not been asked for MQL or SQL counts in more than a year. The reality is investors are no longer funding growth without profitability, so aligning our marketing efforts to revenue helped prove that our modest marketing investments are producing pipeline. Reporting on pipeline also enables us to report Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) tied to pipeline and revenue (10X and 29X respectively for last year). How has your marketing reporting changed in the last two years?

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Struggling to navigate the digital marketing world? You're not alone! Many design/build firms know they should be marketing online, but don't know where to start. In our new episode of Beyond the Bid, "Building Your Brand: A Design/Build Marketing Deep Dive", we unpack the challenges and provide actionable solutions. 💡 We'll help you: ● Overcome the fear of the unknown in the digital space. ● Understand the importance of a well-designed, mobile-friendly website that acts as a lead-generation tool. ● Learn how to use content marketing, SEO, and social media to connect with your target audience. ● Create a marketing plan that fits your goals, and understand that building a strong brand is a long-term investment #designbuild #constructionmarketing #digitalstrategy #businessgrowth #podcast #beyondthebid #marketingtips

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Question for marketers- has the game changed for SEO? We're kicking off our SEO strategy this quarter, but with Google AI overviews and ChatGPT Search has me questioning the ROI. Any data on this yet?

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Hey - B2B marketers, here's a crazy thing... Apparently, marketing budgets are down (shocker!), but media-buying budgets are flat to up. Think about that for a second - this implies the portion of marketing spend that goes to the least attributable element of the plan (advertising) is up robustly. For those of us in the smaller end of B2B, this probably rings a little hollow, as the pressure to identify the financial impact of every dollar spent does not seem to me to have loosened at all. BUT! Maybe those big media spenders are onto something. Maybe building brand through programs you can't track through Hubspot/Marketo/Salesforce/etc bring a value that needs to be surfaced through data aggregation rather than UTMs. Something to think about - let me know your thoughts! https://lnkd.in/gxdVg43X

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New Rule (Bill Maher Voice).... If your Pricing page doesn't have numbers on it, it's not a pricing page. It's a packaging page. Mark and I discuss - and he's clearly fired up 🔥! In this episode of #TheUnexpectedLever, Mark dives into why transparent pricing is essential for building trust, keeping buyers engaged, and weeding out low-intent prospects early. Hear his passionate take on how upfront pricing saves everyone time and creates stronger B2B relationships on the new episode of #TheUnexpectedLever If your product is worth it, why hide the cost?

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I love Jon Miller’s message about how marketing and the playbook must change in 2025 and beyond. This has huge implications to the data strategy and measurement that supports the marketing strategy and what is working with prospects and customers to build pipeline and renew existing customers. Relationships, trust and proof points that your solutions deliver on brand promises. AI is changing everything - it’s not about sending more and more - instead we must connect with audiences and understand their needs and timing to adopt new solutions as well as expand what they have — and we do this by focusing on relationships - buying teams, renewal teams and their motivations and needs.

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"Building a great audience is the key to successful marketing." - Rick Miller of Path2Response LLC Watch our Direct Mail Minute 60-second video to learn how to do it right. https://lnkd.in/epM7_eYH #directmail #marketing #path2response

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As agencies and event organizers face growing demands to demonstrate ROI, ROE, and ROO, passive data is becoming essential for validating an event's success metrics. In the recent article from C&IT Magazine, our data and tech expert, Julie Yorke, explores leveraging passive data to gather actionable insights and elevate the attendee experience. Read the full article below 👇 https://loom.ly/8kZ34GI

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In 2024, the Paddle team hosted or attended 95 (🤯) events. And there are just 2 people in our field marketing team (massive props to Leigh Anne for leading this!). We learned that SMALL gatherings drive the best conversations and most pipeline. Even at the big conferences, it’s when you get into small conversations that magic happens. As my good friend Munya Hoto (MSc) says (probably quoting Andy Stanley), “Life happens in circles, not rows.” People don’t connect or change their minds from sitting in a big crowd (rows). But they certainly do when 'doing life' with peers over dinner or drinks (circles). When I joined, I didn’t know if events would be a big lever of growth for Paddle. But, we treated it as an experiment and gave it a shot. And very quickly I saw first-hand how valuable they were for us. I can remember the first time I had dinner with a prospect and a customer, and found myself just being silent, as the customer told the prospect about the huge value Paddle had driven. As we began doubling down on events, we’ve learned that small, focused events and dinners create the most value for us. So even at big conferences, we try and find those rooms. Mainly for these 3 reasons: 1. We start to stand out We want to be the most helpful brand in our market. Others will attend the biggest industry events, but you won’t see them go out of their way to be present in the SaaS community. Being in-person can allow you to be truly helpful. Attending 2 events every week all over the world is hard. But hard is good - because not everyone does it. And we start to stand out by helping, not by pitching. We know that if we help enough other people achieve their dreams, then as a result, we will achieve ours too. 2. It’s a better conversation Smaller events allow us to have better conversations. Being face to face with someone across a dinner table and getting to know them is so much better at building trust and relationships than pitching your product during a big keynote. Paddle also has quite a complicated value proposition (a merchant of record that manages your payments, tax and compliance needs, so you can focus on growth), and although we need to constantly refine this to a simple explainer, communicating conversationally works better than a big strapline on a booth. 3. Truly supporting sales The more aligned we are with sales, the more events we can do well. So, instead of the marketing team preaching its calendar of activities and persuading sales to get involved, we take a different approach. If sales is working on a deal with prospects in Zagreb, we say ‘Great, we can be in Zagreb. Can you invite 10 people?’. Suddenly, everyone is sharing the load and there's a combined purpose. Kimberly and Glyn have been great partners in this. These intimate, ad hoc events lead to the best conversations and most closed deals. ------ Brands are built one good conversation at a time. Do whatever it takes to make those happen.

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Here's a fun, free new resource for your competitive intel program: CompeteKit by Healthy Competition 🥦 It's a directory of recommended software and agencies to help you gather competitive intel, learn why you win or lose, and differentiate from other players in your space. Each vendor on the list came from one of two places: 1. recommendations from the Healthy Competition community 2. conversations / demos I've seen from promising up-and-comers I don't think there's another resource out there that accurately captures the CI tooling space. The other ones I looked at were either too bloated (anyone who's anyone can claim a spot), or they don't take into account really early stage startups that are approaching CI in new ways. In either case, I feel really good about all the tools listed on the Competekit. Hopefully you discover some new ones you've never heard of before! It's a living, breathing resource. So if I stumble on more, I'll be sure to add them in. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gv6Fh9Gv PS: if there are any tools that are missing that you think should be included, fill out the form at the bottom of the directory and I’ll take a look at them! 🙂

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I’ve peaked. Truly a massive highlight of my professional career so far (and my first podcast!). Was I nervous? VERY! But were Phil Gamache and Jonathan Taylor also the best hosts? YES! They made me feel so comfortable and totally embraced my geeky side 🥰. A HUGE thank you to Humans of Martech for having me!! Watch, listen and read here: https://lnkd.in/gdqvM232 #Podcast #HumansOfMartech #ProductMarketing #PMM #Messaging #Positioning #ServerSide #SquadGoals

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