Positioning as a Growth Engine

Drew: Hello, Renegade Marketers! If this is your first time listening, welcome, and if you're a regular listener, welcome back. Before I present today's episode, I am beyond thrilled to announce that our second in-person CMO Super Huddle is happening November 6th and 7th, 2025. In Palo Alto last year, we brought together 101 marketing leaders for a day of sharing, caring, and daring each other to greatness, and we're doing it again! Same venue, same energy, same ambition to challenge convention, with an added half-day strategy lab exclusively for marketing leaders. We're also excited to have TrustRadius and Boomerang as founding sponsors for this event. Early Bird tickets are now available at cmohuddles.com. You can even see a video there of what we did last year. Grab yours before they're gone. I promise you we will sell out, and it's going to be flocking awesomer!

You're about to listen to a recording from CMO Huddle Studio, our live streaming show featuring the flocking awesome B2B marketers of CMO Huddles. In this episode, Sara Larson and Marni Puente share how they refine their positioning to reach new buyers, rally internal teams, and tell a story that truly reflects the value they bring. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. You'll be supporting our quest to be the number one B2B marketing podcast. All right, let's dive in.

Narrator: Welcome to Renegade Marketers Unite, possibly the best weekly podcast for CMOs and everyone else looking for innovative ways to transform their brand, drive demand, and just plain cut through, proving that B2B does not mean boring to business. Here's your host and Chief Marketing Renegade, Drew Neisser.

Drew: Welcome to CMO Huddle Studio, the live streaming show dedicated to inspiring B2B greatness. I'm your host, Drew Neisser, penguin-in-chief of CMO Huddles, live from my home studio in New York City. Speaking of penguins, did you know this? Penguins spend 75% of their lives positioning themselves exactly where they need to be underwater hunting for food. Talk about commitment to placement. Now, unlike these aquatic specialists, too many brands float aimlessly in their markets hoping customers will somehow find them. That's why in today's show, we're diving into positioning as a growth driver, because unlike penguins, your brand can't hold its breath waiting to be discovered. Okay, with that, let's bring on Marni Puente, Senior Vice President and CMO of SAIC, who is joining us on the show for the first time. Hello, Marni, and welcome. How are you and where are you?

Marni: Hi, Drew. So great to be here. So I am actually located in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, although my company is headquartered in DC. So I'm in DC a few times a month, but today I'm in Rehoboth.

Drew: All right, well, I think you're our first guest from Delaware, which is very exciting. You know, we're trying to cover all the states, so that's amazing. So you happen to participate on MMA AI—that's easy to say—MMA AI Transformation Summit with my friend Shelly Palmer, and you dove deep into AI's role in marketing transformation, which I think makes this discussion pretty timely, right?

Marni: It absolutely does. And yes, I adore Shelly too. Great friend, and I've known him a couple of years. And so when I saw that he was leading this AI CMO Transformation Summit, I didn't hesitate to join. So I just got back yesterday from New York City for that. It was just incredible in terms of how to leverage AI to really help as a competitive advantage and also driving growth in our positioning strategy, which I know is what the session is all about.

Drew: So let's talk about that. How are you—you know, based on it—you know, are you evolving it? Talk a little bit about how you're leveraging AI in the context of positioning.

Marni: Yeah, great question. So Drew, on one hand, I've been fortunate. So I've been at SAIC as of a year last week. So CMO for first year exactly, celebrating my anniversary. And when I came into SAIC, I had a unique opportunity to really rebuild the marketing function. And so that's, you know, as opposed to many of my counterparts and CMOs that are kind of retrofitting AI into the marketing function, to really build AI at the center of marketing and take an AI-first approach. And this is important in so many ways because, one, it's a cost savings, right? We're not retrofitting, but it also gives us a unique competitive advantage. So as I'm thinking about building my team, both the business model, the types of talent I need on the team, it's very centered around AI and really thinking about driving smarter engagement with customers, future-proofing our brand. I'm just undergoing a brand refresh. So we leverage AI in a number of ways to strategically position ourselves for growth with the brand. And really, I mean, being in government contracting, we're seeing a lot of change, right? There's a lot of transformation in the industry. And so how can we leverage AI to stay ahead of rapid government and market disruption?

Drew: Well, you covered a lot there. So maybe we break it down. The first bucket of cost savings is—typically that we're seeing in CMO Huddles in the community is a lot of folks are using it for content creation. Is that where you're seeing the cost savings?

Marni: Absolutely content creation, but I think of it more as augmenting staff, right? Because we are looking at cost reductions and resource constraints. AI plays a really important part in terms of augmenting staff so that it takes away some of that more kind of manual work to really free them up to focus on the real strategic priorities, and then also just in terms of doing things efficiently, cost-effectively. Overall, it's really helping to inform our overall operational and business model for marketing in SAIC.

Drew: So it's funny at Human X, that was one of the big things that like, if there's a lot of tedious, repetitious work that you can somehow integrate AI into. And I'm wondering, so with fewer people, you're basically asking them to do more, but you're saying that they can do more because they have these tools. And I'm wondering, is there a specific sort of part of manual work that you've been able to see some really, some amazing gains?

Marni: Yeah. So we're still early stages. You know, I've only been in the role for a year, and part of it is building the marketing capability, just getting some of those, like, you know, basic functions in place. But absolutely, we're looking at how can we increase efficiency? So content is king, as we all know, as marketers, right? We can't produce enough content, honestly, just given the size of the team, the budgets, etc. So that's one way we're looking at increasing the volume of content, increasing efficiencies. Because what used to take, you know, maybe 10 hours to draft, let's say, a thought leadership piece now may take 30 minutes to get it 80% there, right, and then we use the human for the 20%. So I think there's just a huge opportunity around augmenting the team. I want to be really clear though, it's not for me about replacing marketers, right? It's about augmenting the marketing function so that marketers can actually focus on more strategic work than they are now, and it takes away some of the mundane, more monotonous work.

Drew: Interesting, and I'm seeing that. I understand theoretically how this is happening in the sense and I obviously, I know I use these things. And the thing that I'm struggling a little bit with is that this speed, which you just saved, you talked about saving basically nine and a half hours or so, does not equal good or even great, right?

Marni: Quality.

Drew: And so this is the part that I'm particularly when it comes to writing. As a writer, I think a lot about—geez, is the ability to create this content that much faster actually helping the brands create better content, more targeted content, more relevant content, and if so, how are you making sure that's the case?

Marni: Yes, so that's a great question. So it's looking at content at every level of the funnel. And so how do we—so we're thinking a lot about how do we use AI down funnel and things like Account-Based Marketing, right, which we call customer-centric marketing, and CIC to deal-based marketing, etc. So it's really about not just kind of that top level producing content, but then how can we hyper-personalize it using AI? I think that's where the magic really comes in with AI. It's not just about volume, because we all know more content is not necessarily better, but we do know that hyper-personalized and real-time feedback and all of those things that we've always struggled as marketers to do manually is where AI can come in and help.

Drew: Interesting. Okay, another topic that came up at Human X, and this is one of those where you walk this fine line between personal and creepy. You could know a lot about an individual, and when we're talking about personalization, are we talking about getting it down to the individual? So hey, we know it's, we know this persona, we know this individual. And we're taking some content and then converting it so it's literally down on an individualized basis.

Marni: It's both, to be honest, Drew. And so the way that I've structured my team is we have always-on brand campaigns, right? And we're undergoing a brand refresh, so we need that top level, right? 100% you need the brand, and that's more, let's just say, appealing to the masses, right? It's not just customers, it's shareholders, it's employees, et cetera. So it's so much broader. But I think as we go down funnel, right, and we're really speaking to the customer, the more hyper-personalized we can be, and mapping it back to the buyer journey, and knowing how do they like to receive information? Where are they in the journey? Etc. Those are the kinds of things AI can help. So all the way from top to awareness in terms of providing us insights into the brand and helping us build the customer engagement and this future-proof brand, but also down to the hyper-personalized campaigns, which we really need when we're talking about Account-Based Marketing and deal-based.

Drew: And what you're describing, it sounds wonderful, and it could be complicated because it requires a lot of different data sets. And so for that, I'm just curious. Are you creating your own tools to do this, or are you relying on the newly released AI versions of various tools that you already have?

Marni: So it's a combo of both, to be honest. And we do have certain restrictions. As a government contractor, we're a highly regulated industry, and so some of it is data that we have, but then some of that is proprietary data that we don't necessarily have, and so it really is a combo. And we also have some incredible AI tools internally that we have built. Like TenGen is, for instance, one that is government compliant, right? It's a form of ChatGPT, but it's very specific to us at SAIC. So we're seeing how much can we leverage that internally? Because we do have certain restrictions with what AI tools we can use, just given that we're a government contractor too. There's a whole host of not just technical, but policy, et cetera we need to consider as we bring on these new tools.

Drew: Ah, that's so interesting, right? I mean, so you literally, it like an off-the-shelf GPT wouldn't work because you have to have other guidelines in there, or you have to have the ability, or, I mean, in theory, you could sort of port it through your sandbox, but, yeah, I didn't think I realized that the government mandates a certain use of tools in certain ways, and so that adds another layer of complexity.

Marni: Right? And we have certain firewalls and that sort of thing. And this gets a little bit technical, to be honest, beyond my head, but I work very closely with our CIO as I think any more and more marketers and CIOs are like attached at the hip, right, to understand what we can and can't do as a government contractor. And so TenGen that I mentioned, which is our AI tool that we use for customers internally as well, is a form of ChatGPT, but it is government compliant, and so it doesn't necessarily... there are certain restrictions, of course, that we have to adhere to, but it's something that we know we can use. We can stay compliant, and it still has had a tremendous impact on our ability to increase efficiency. Really, just free my team up to focus more on growing and thinking strategically, because we have so much work to do, right? And so taking some of the manual work off of them, handing over to TenGen and other AI tools has been a huge help to help us increase productivity and focus more on strategic-level work.

Drew: So before I bring on our other guest on the show, I realize that we probably haven't actually answered the question that we're talking about on this show, which is positioning. So let's get a sense of because you've been there a year, you've gone through an exercise. Talk a little bit about the positioning of SAIC and how you have needed to evolve it. How you even see the idea? I think that the concept of positioning often is difficult for people to grasp who aren't in marketing. So just give us a little bit of a taste of that, and then we'll come back.

Marni: Yeah, so it's interesting. So I was hired about a year ago. I have an incredible CEO, Toni Townes-Whitley, who came from Microsoft, so she's very savvy in all things IT, and certainly marketing as well. She saw a big gap in marketing, and so one of the reasons I was hired was to rebrand, right? We all know marketing is much more than branding and positioning. I think it's been really great in terms of how we leveraged AI for that is to really understand this kind of path to value. It's not just about driving operational efficiencies, which is so important right now in government contracting. As we know, DOGE is coming. We are trying to reflect that we're helping our customers. We need to also walk the talk. So looking at that, but also marketing leaders really thinking about and aligning AI with revenue, with customer experience, with operational efficiencies, of course, also shifting focus from traditional KPIs to AI-driven performance, and that's a big shift for us. And I think that, quite honestly, is going to be one as marketers. Sometimes we've always struggled with traditional KPIs and maybe not being as meaningful to non-marketers, but I think as we're seeing AI now and taking that AI-first approach, looking at predictive analytics, conversion modeling and how AI can help, not just from an operational efficiency perspective, but certainly from a revenue and impact on the growth.

Drew: Okay, all right, well, I still have lots more questions for you, but we're gonna bring on Sara Larson now, who is the VP of Marketing and Communications at Wolters Kluwer Health and as a returning guest who previously appeared on the show to discuss sales enablement and CMO job searching. Hello, Sara, how are you? Where are you this fine day?

Sara: Hello, Drew. It's so good to be back and back on the show and to see you and you're doing so well. I'm outside of Boston today. It's very rainy Boston day. But you know, as they say, rain brings the flowers.

Drew: There you go.

Drew: So first, congratulations on being named Forrester's 2025 B2B ROI Honors Winner.

Sara: There should be like music to that.

Drew: Yes, exactly. Really an amazing achievement, and which means your work is driving impact, which ties pretty much directly to this conversation. So maybe you could just talk about the Forrester thing and what was behind that.

Sara: Right? Yeah, great. Well, thank you. Thank you for the congratulations and the team has put in an incredible amount of work over the past couple of years. Because, you know, those awards are not one-and-done things. You have multiple projects that kind of lead to them. And the first sort of foundational project that we had was to look at positioning. One of the challenges that we had as an organization... So I work with Wolters Kluwer Health, just to give you a little bit of that background. I work with Wolters Kluwer Health. We provide solutions in the healthcare space. Specifically, I work around UpToDate, which helps provide a solution around clinical decision support that helps your doctor really make the best decision for you. So we all think our doctors know everything, and they know a lot, but oftentimes they will consult different clinical decision support tools and reference tools to help them make decisions. Eight times out of 10 in the US, they're using UpToDate for that. And so we have a great market share. We have wonderful customers, we have great usage, we have great positioning around our brand. But one of the challenges that we realized is that the buying committee was starting to shift around our solution. And so this is probably something that a lot of companies go through, as market dynamics change and technology changes, that there might be newer people in the buying committee. And so one of the first things that we needed to understand is, if we want to continue our growth trajectory and continue to serve our clients, how do we understand the buying committee and make sure we're best positioned with those buyers. And, you know, one of the things that we initially did was a buying committee study, and it was really very deep into Salesforce, looking at roles, looking at contacts, talking to sales, about who they're talking to. Because sometimes it's sort of hard to put those studies together, but really got a good sense of who is part of that decision process around deciding to either purchase for the first time or renew our solution, and what are their roles. And we found that there were increasingly what we call non-clinical buyers, so people that were not necessarily doctors or in a clinical role in a health provider organization. Those people have very different needs, potentially, than the clinical roles. And so that was sort of the aha that said, "Okay, we really need to think about our positioning, not just our messaging, but our positioning to the buying committee." So that was kind of the first step.

Drew: Just a side question on that, which is, because there's both clinical and non-clinical, did it end up being there were more people on the buying committee as well? Was that part of this discovery?

Sara: Yeah, there's definitely more people than we thought we had. You know, again, our solution has been around about 30 years. It's beloved by clinicians. They love it. If you walked into your doctor today and said, "Hey, I just talked to someone who works at UpToDate," they would say, "I know UpToDate. I love UpToDate." Your doctor, most likely will say that. However, those doctors aren't the people buying the solution, right? They're the users. And so the idea of really understanding who the new buyers were, we still have some of the traditional buying roles on the committee, but now IT is playing a much more pronounced role. And if you look at the trends in the healthcare industry over the past several years, they've been putting an incredible amount of investment in building their EHRs, their electronic health records, the MyChart that you might log into if you go to your doctor. And that investment has brought IT to the table in many, many, many more decisions, because things have to now connect into the EHR. And how do we justify an expense relative to the EHR and so that IT and operational set of roles on the committee are becoming more and more pronounced.

Drew: Interesting. Okay, so I'd love to... I just, my in my notes, I went user not equal buyer, which is always a challenge, but it's quite typical in a lot of B2B buying things. So from a positioning standpoint, how did you end up shifting specifically recognizing that now you've got two sort of major groups with very different evaluative criteria?

Sara: Right? And positioning, again, not messaging, because that's secondary. The positioning piece really took the form of, okay, where do we provide value? We provide incredible value into the clinician space and into that relationship with the patient. We also, from a product perspective, can be providing value in some of these operational areas. And if you were going to look at our solution, if we were to make some enhancements and features in it, we could very easily be an enterprise level type of solution. And so that was sort of an aha moment to say we should really be positioning at the enterprise level within an organization, because we have the right people at the table. We have the COO, the CIO, we have the folks that are looking across enterprise impact, not just the clinical impact. And so that positioning work helped us unlock some thinking about our product as well. And so if we kind of look at the question of where do you use positioning beyond just messaging, it helped unlock where can we provide more value in our product? And it led to us doing some rebranding and some new product launches around enterprise, and positioning us really as an enterprise solution. And so that was a big step for us, and then obviously that has affected our messaging and how we bring it to market.

Drew: And I want to just put a huge punctuation point on this. If your positioning exercise is simply to say we're gonna be this against this, and you don't change the product again, we're sort of in the same sort of world when you just change your brand and you change the color. I mean, it doesn't matter. But what's so interesting is, in this discovery process, you discovered that, hey, we've been making clinicians happy for a long time, and that's not going to change. But because we have these other groups, we can't just say, hey, other groups, your clinicians are happy, keep buying. We need to give them their own reason to continue, and so that meant product changes. I think that's so fascinating and so important, because I'm guessing that this was a go-to-market discovery that marketing was very much in the middle of because you did the research of it, and you helped, as a result, change the product because you needed to in order to deliver on a new positioning that appealed to this broader buying group, which is fascinating.

Sara: You have to remember buying groups exist in an environment, in an economy, right? And so if you're looking at positioning, you can change your product, but you also have to look at what else is changing in the world, and for us, in the healthcare space, and in particular providers, the past five years have brought an incredible amount of change. I mean, we're sort of all reflecting where were you five years ago over the past week, when we think of COVID and the COVID lockdown that had profound impact on provider organizations, from the level of reimbursements they were getting to the staff and retention of staff and burnout, the profitability of those organizations, how they're delivering services. And so we were now operating in an environment where, yes, we had a product that clinicians love, but maybe the health system couldn't afford it anymore, or they had to think about a different way of how they can justify it. And so the external factors on your positioning are as important as the buying committee factors. So you have to really look at how they work together.

Drew: And you've made a big point about distinguishing between positioning and messaging. So talk a little bit about, okay, you've repositioned, if you will, as an enterprise solution. Talk about what happens next in order, because you have to bring it to life.

Sara: And sometimes I hate the word messaging, because it means so many things to so many people. Some people think messaging is positioning. Some people think messaging is write me an email. Well, there's a pretty big continuum there of what messaging is, and so how we have chosen to break this down, and what's working for us is to be able to take what is our product positioning in the market that we're in today? What value do we think that it provides? Who does it provide that value to? What are the alternatives, including not doing anything? What are the alternatives? And that informs how we talk to the buying committee. And so that's what messaging is to us. What are the value proof points that we can specifically articulate to a COO, a CFO, the CMO—in this case, the Chief Medical Officer. And how do we demonstrate those proof points? We have ROI tools that have relevant clinical outputs. We're working right now on ROI that may have more operational impacts as well. And so that's how we've taken that positioning and broken it down into the thoughts, the words and the tools that we use, and then obviously bringing that to market through a variety of different channels.

Drew: So before we get to it, and I totally agree with you on messaging. I'm always confused. It's one thing I rarely—I'm always happy when no one asks me about what that is. But can you articulate the repositioning that you went through today?

Sara: UpToDate? UpToDate, the positioning really was at a very high level. We did two things. One is we looked at the product of UpToDate, and we realized that we serviced two very unique markets. We service hospital systems, hospital provider systems in the enterprise space. And we also have a direct-to-consumer product. It's really not consumer but direct-to-doctor. Yeah, direct-to-doctor. We call that our individual purchase option direct to individuals in an e-commerce model. And so we looked at who are those folks, like, how do they associate? And why do they buy? It's because they're trying to manage their professional lives. And so we now have two suites. We have our UpToDate Enterprise, and we have UpToDate Pro for those individuals. And so that helped us really start to distinguish our product roadmaps, distinguish the messaging that we would bring for those to the people that mattered in the purchase process. The other thing that we've been able to do as we did that was look at some of our other products in the enterprise space that we were also selling. So for example, we have a product called—used to be called Lexicomp, now it's called Lexi-Drugs. That's a product that's used within providers and pharmacy organizations to look at medication interactions, prescribing information, and so we've now bundled that and put that into our UpToDate Enterprise suite. We also had another product, formerly called Emmi that helped with the patient, and would take the information that a doctor might have given a patient and put it into patient education materials, engagement programs to help them manage chronic diseases. We've moved that into our UpToDate portfolio for UpToDate Enterprise. So now you start to see a breadth of products that are available under this UpToDate brand and our UpToDate Enterprise positioning. So a couple things there was really thinking about where do you put your products relative to the people that are going to buy them and use them? And then, how can you streamline your portfolio to bring the most value?

Drew: Right? And I love it. There's so many things that just—if translating this for any business—I'll look at a website sometimes, and I'll see a B2B brand with hundreds of products in there. That makes no sense. If they could consolidate against the one or two brands that are better known in the marketplace and build kind of a platform, if you will, or at least a suite, you're making your dollars go so much further. Plus, in the case of UpToDate, which had brand love already, it was an easy one to build on.

Sara: The thing is, Drew, the intellectual, academic exercise of thinking through that makes perfect sense. It's really hard to do. There's a lot of change management there. There's a lot of health beliefs. Positioning is the key to help unlock some of those roadblocks and having those conversations. That was key to us across the ELT. We've discussed how can we use the UpToDate brand this way or that way in the past, until we had done the positioning work and understood this enterprise positioning, understood our Pro positioning. We couldn't move beyond the conversation to actually do that branding work, right? So your positioning is critical to making those shifts.

Drew: I love it. All right? Well, it's now time for me to talk about CMO Huddles. We launched in 2020, speaking of that, right at the beginning of the pandemic. CMO Huddles is the only community of flocking awesome B2B marketing leaders, and that has a logo featuring a penguin. Oh, there's those penguins again. Well, just in case you were wondering, a group of these curious, adaptable and problem-solving birds is called a huddle. And the leaders in the CMO Huddles are all that and more, huddling together to conquer the toughest job in the C-suite. Okay? Sara, Marni, you're both incredibly busy marketing leaders. I'm wondering if you could share a specific example of how CMO Huddles has helped you.

Sara: First of all, Drew, I want to thank you for your work. Five years ago, when you started CMO Huddles, I think you started this really pro bono. You brought groups of people together. It was one group, and then it was two, and then it was three, then it was four, and there were so many Huddles, and it was an opportunity for those smaller groups of us to get together, because we didn't know, like, what's going on. We're dealing with all kinds of crazy things. Every week there was something, and it was almost like this therapy session that didn't exist anywhere else in the world. And so I really appreciate your personal commitment to learning what was going on and jumping in and taking action. And I'm just so thrilled to see how the community has grown, how your impact has grown, your team has grown. And so just thank you for starting that seed five years ago. And I just love connecting with the folks in the CMO Huddles community. Again, it continues to be therapy, but it's also very pragmatic. I mean, I've been able to get some great resources, got some hiring out of the CMO Huddles team. So thank you. And here's to another five more years.

Drew: I love it. Thank you. Yes, just in case—I was thinking back of that we met in that first six months, 55 times. It was crazy, because there was just—you're right. I mean, there was so much happening that particular spring and summer. So anyway, well, and Marni, you're relatively new to CMO Huddles.

Marni: Yeah! So I'm not a veteran like Sara. I'm impressed with the five years, but definitely hope to be collaborating with you all for the next five. So, yeah, I mean, for me, it's been invaluable. I took over as CMO of SAIC exactly a year ago, a year ago last week, so just celebrated my one year. Can you believe it, Drew? And it's been invaluable in so many ways. I think not just—it's such a supportive group. It's like a support group. I think Sara said, and she hit the nail on the head, but Drew, your energy. And it's fun, but it's also the networking and the peer exchange piece of it. And I think what makes it really unique from other CMO peer exchanges I'm a part of is it's B2B, and we all know as B2B marketers, we have unique challenges and opportunities, but really we speak the same language, and so I think that's really helpful. And so I think it's really helped me not just survive, but thrive in my first year as a CMO of SAIC. I think also, and I will just state the obvious, as a government contractor, I've never seen so much churn in two months in an industry and really leaning on other folks to keep up and hear what best practices are, and so forth. So it's really helped me from that perspective as well.

Drew: I love it, and by the way, both of you attended our CMO Super Huddle, which I'm very grateful for. So that was awesome as well. Anyway, if you're a B2B marketing leader who wants to build a strong peer network, gain recognition as a thought leader and get your very own stress penguin, those are like this. By the way, do yourself a favor. Join us at CMOHuddles.com. Okay, so let's throw this out there to both of you and say, what's the biggest mistake companies make when it comes to positioning, and how can they avoid it?

Sara: Biggest mistakes? We never make mistakes as marketers.

Drew: Seen and observed, not personally.

Sara: Not personally. So, you know, I feel like you can look at success stories and challenges. You know, if you think about like you're sitting there wearing like a pair of Nike shoes right now, I mean, that is a company that completely repositioned right from a shoe company to a lifestyle brand. If you went and got Starbucks this morning, you realize that they have really kind of screwed up their positioning, right? They positioned this place as a place to go hang out, and now, like, it's awful to watch. It's a pile of people standing up in the mobile section. And so I think the biggest mistake, if you apply those consumer examples into B2B, is not understanding where your customers are at and what change can they go on, what change journey can they take with you around any positioning that you might need to take. And so I think always listening to your customers is probably the number one positive thing you should do, but also it's a mistake if you're not doing it.

Drew: Yeah, it's such a good point, and you told the story early on of how understanding your customer helped you there. The other thing I just want to make two points on: one, Nike completely destroyed their brand in the last two years, and is now trying to recover. They lost 40% of their value because they forgot about the customer and the communities they met. So it's another thank you for bringing that brand out. Okay, Marni, any other mistakes that come to mind?

Marni: I mean, it kind of piggybacks on what Sara's saying. Because I completely agree with Sara, like we're obsessed with the customer and marketing. We have to know everything we can write about the customer, and part of that is market research. And I go back, I laughed her, because this is years ago when I was in grad school for marketing, and I had a professor that kind of drilled into me, like, look, you can't devise a marketing strategy. And this goes for positioning as well, unless you've done the research, otherwise, you're shooting in the dark. And so I think to Sara's point, knowing your customers, making sure you understand not just your customers, though, but the market trends. And I'm a perfect example of this, right? I started on a brand refresh six or seven months ago, new administration. I've had to pivot very quickly so market research, but then don't just say, okay, it's a one and done. You've got to continually have your pulse on the market, what your customers are going through, right? And what's top of mind for them. And if you aren't seen on that pulse, then you're going to miss the mark completely.

Drew: You know, it's so interesting, as we were talking about this pivoting. And, you know, obviously we are in a very challenging moment. And I'm also going back to what you said, Sara, with Starbucks, you know, they pivoted. They changed the structure of the things because of COVID. Now, COVID is sort of just an everyday thing. And so, you know, we missed the coffee shop that they were, sort of, what it makes me wonder is, and I think about packaged goods, and I think about P&G, they got a positioning, let's take Gain. And they've been smell as proof of clean for 30 years. That positioning, if you will, or promise and again, maybe those are different words. Has not changed, but we're sort of talking about maybe that doesn't apply in B2B, because it's just you can't get away with that. So are we saying that positioning is something that you just you have to move around on I'm curious what your thoughts, Sara, on that is.

Sara: Yeah. I mean, I think there's two things you have to look at, right? You have to look at your customers and where they're at, and you have to look at the market and the reality of the market dynamics. I mean, I think part of what you're describing is there's a lot going on in the market dynamics right now in your space. And how do you think about that? I mean, if we were to think about, you know, two years ago, many tech companies, AI pops out right? And how are we reacting to that market dynamic in our positioning? That was, you know, a big, big topic. I think we've all kind of been dealing with that. And so we, I've sort of seen when organizations have to deal with that question of, like, majorly changing customer needs or massive market shifts. What do you do? Well, one is probably not a knee jerk reaction, right? So one is study and so, as Marni says, do the research. But also you have to study internally as well, and know what are the core brand attributes? What are the core values of your organization and your product. We went through this and had our sort of, you know, spiritual awakening on this with AI when, you know, we're an information product, right? And AI is all about new access to information and information and content. And, you know, should we, should we jump on the AI bandwagon? It's like, whoa, wait a second. I don't think you want your doctor going to ChatGPT to like, tell you what to do. We're not there yet. And so we took the position of, how do we think about responsible AI? And that was our positioning on AI is, let's let's do AI, but let's do it responsibly. Because if you look at our brand, and you look at our brand attributes, trust is the number one thing in our brand. And people trust our content, they trust our brand, and so we weren't going to mess with that, but we couldn't ignore AI. Can't put your head in the sand on that, right? So, you know, it's like, okay, we're going to take responsibility. Now, two years later, we're looking at great, how do we innovate? And we're looking at, how do you responsibly innovate, and we're looking at, how do we partner and get into workflows and different you know? So you kind of have to look at the market, you have to look at yourself, and you have to look at your customers.

Drew: Yeah, it's so interesting, because the way generative AI works is not the same as, say, machine learning or other things. It's in the models are so different that in generative, AI will always generate an answer whether it's right or wrong, and in medical things, however, I've also seen where generative AI is playing a really profound role in diagnosis, and that they're right now some of the models are as accurate, or more accurate than humans in diagnosis, so it's fascinating, and it will do with this. So what it sounds like you're saying, and maybe we can Marni go back to you. And the market forces, when they are so disruptive as things like this, is, you can't help but go back and examine your positioning and say, huh, this, and this is where it gets really tricky and all of these things, there's core values which probably shouldn't change. Maybe there's a major company promise, but the positioning and go to market, I guess, has to adjust. So let's talk a little bit about how the process that you've gone to deal with all the changes happening coming as a result of Washington change.

Marni: Yeah, it's been fun. You know, I came back to government contracting a year ago, and lots of change, I will say. The advantage—and like I said, I moved out on the new brand refresh before the new administration—and it was really about helping to grow our advisory practice in our civilian business. Well, those two things are not necessarily priorities for this administration, so I had to do a complete pivot. The one plus, I will say, is a lot of the things that are important to this current administration are reflected in our brand and who we are. So it was more of toning down, I would say, some of the things we were kind of leaning into to align to the corporate strategy and where that's going, and then, you know, really resurfacing some of the things that we're already doing that are really important in this administration. So I'll give you a couple examples of those. We are very focused on, you know, bringing Silicon Valley tech to government, and we have our commercial service offering. So we're really promoting those big time—things like, you know, efficiencies, effectiveness, all of that. What we do around operationalizing AI, not just for our government customers, but internally as well, and how I'm even just with the marketing function, thinking about how can we build out with AI at the core, right, to meet the demands—the things we're saying to our government customers that we're doing that internally, you know, because the DOGE has come in, there's a lot of change there, and I feel like we're really well positioned around that. And the other thing is that we have really been—we understand the mission, which is great, and that's not changing. So that's a unique attribute that we bring, that, you know, maybe Silicon Valley tech that doesn't have the government background brings, but we also have the IT, the engineering expertise, and we have a really large ecosystem that we don't just, you know, tap into—we actually help activate. And so those are the things, you know, we talk about, the things we're really hyping up right now under our brand, which is around Mission Integration. We understand the mission, but we also have the ecosystem. We have the expertise and expedient ingenuity. And I think those three things we're finding really, really resonate and are—they're very true, right? We wouldn't say them if they weren't, but they really resonate with this current administration.

Drew: Expedient ingenuity—yeah, there you go. There's a dynamic that storyteller could go wild with. Let's talk about measurement. We've operationalized positioning so that, in theory, it can drive measurable business impact. Yeah, okay, those are, you know, the gap between those two things is pretty big, and so I'm wondering how you look at even demonstrating with change positioning, and it's working, because how does that converse? What's that look like?

Marni: Well, I'll just say, just on the brand piece, and then I'd love to hear Sara's thoughts, because I know she's got great thoughts on ROI, etc. It's more important now than ever. And I remember, like, 10 years ago, you know, Sara, you probably remember, it feels like it was such a struggle, really, right? Especially at a top level, awareness level, which is where we traditionally thought about brand and positioning to really show—and traditional KPIs impressions, you know, reach, etc., really doesn't mean much to the board and to the rest of the C-suite. And so I think that's where AI comes in. You know, we talked about the path to value—that's huge. And the way I tend to think of it is in kind of three areas. And one is, what is the impact that marketing is having on the brand? Because that's very important to the board, my board and my executive leadership team. Second is revenue impact growth, right? Huge. And that's where things like deal-based marketing come in for us, you know? And then the how are we positioning to help win deals? And then the third is, what for us, specifically around customer intimacy, and this is really important in this current environment. And so if we can show impact in those three areas, that's really meaningful. So I think it's partly understanding within your industry and within your particular organization, what is going to resonate that you could show impact and boil it up into like—I've chosen three buckets, right? Those three buckets, and then we use AI too to help us, right? This isn't, you know, just a manual process, and so I think that's been really huge in terms of showing the impact. And then of the five brand metrics we have, Drew, there are two that are really meaningful to my CEO, that are on the corporate scorecard. They're so meaningful, and the board looks at them, and I look at them on a quarterly basis, year over year. And if I was to boil it down to two, that's brand relevance. We're not just familiar, they're not just aware, but they find that we're relevant to them. And the second one would be brand consideration. Are they considering us when it comes time for that opportunity? So those are the ways I tend to think about it, and then tend to report out both, you know, quantitative and more qualitative data on both a quarterly as well as an annual basis.

Drew: There we go. We got to get some anecdata in there somehow. Okay, so Sara, having heard all of that, what's your proof of value when you're talking to your bosses?

Sara: Yes, it always is, you know, pipeline and revenue. That's number one, pipeline being the key aligning metric between marketing and sales. However, the constitution of the pipeline and how you get there is very important as you're trying to measure the impact of positioning. There are the brand measures that Marni talked about, which are really important. I'm encouraged in conversations that we're having like these, that brand measures are continuing and growing in terms of relevance within organizations, because I think that there was a period of time where it was like demand, demand, demand, and we weren't thinking about reputation and brand. And so it's encouraging to see that. One of the things that we've done is really zero in on our goal on the positioning, which was to reach those non-clinical buyers. So I have sort of a non-clinical buyer set of metrics that we look at, that look at reach and engagement. So across all of our various tactics, how do we break down our results and look at reach and engagement within those specific non-clinical buyer titles? And so that's one way to say, yes, we're penetrating that space better. They're engaging more. We then tie that to a back-end measurement, which is within our customers, our buyer sentiment. And so if we were to zero in on and just look at non-clinical buyers, what's our buyer sentiment now looking like within, you know, two months after purchasing our product or renewing, and are we starting to see more reach and engagement and increase in buyer sentiment around a key area called value? And are they seeing more value? So we're talking to them at value level. Are they actually seeing it after they purchase? And so that's sort of one way we start to tie those measurements together. The second is, and it's softer, but it is as important, I think, in its adoption metrics. And there are lots of different tools and tricks that we roll out within marketing to try and get sales to talk to their customers better, CX, to talk to their customers better. I've put a variety of adoption metrics in place to say, are we using them? Are we using them at scale? Are we seeing engagement in those various tools, and so those adoption metrics become really important as well.

Drew: Wow. Okay, that was a lot to unpack, and I'm going to try to do it because I think there's some things worth highlighting. A lot of things worth highlighting from both of you. And then I'm going to ask you both to sort of final words of wisdom. But it's impossible for a CMO and B2B to not talk about pipeline. It's harder than it sounds in connecting the dots is harder, and I do have a question on that, but we'll get back to that second. You use the word reputation and brand. I'm a big fan of reputation because people understand that inherently, and they don't understand brand. So thank you for using that word. I love the very clear goal, because part of your positioning was saying we have a broader target. So are we reaching those broader targets? And how do we do that? And then finally, and this is often forgotten, but so important, which is adoption, and particularly with companies that have multiple products, and look, they can buy your product and not use it, and you lose because there's—they're not a reference, they're not a renewal, and you're nice to have, but yeah, I thought I'd use it, and then I never did. So getting that adoption is so important, and so is one of the reasons I love it when marketers are also responsible for customers and customer marketing. So all that is good. The one question that I have is Sara in that you talk about pipeline and how you get there. And this potentially gets into sourcing, and which is another problem I have. But how do you sort of show marketing's contribution to pipeline? And I even hate asking the question.

Sara: You know, it's so funny, because I still remember it was like 10-12 years ago, sales started asking, like, "Well, how did you get this pipeline?" Not like, even like, what it was or like, do I trust the number—it was like, "Well, how'd you get it like, what content did you use and what tactic?" And so I think that increasingly, our sales organization, again, you can look at the buyer journey stats. You know, everyone's self-educating before they talk to sales. Sales needs to understand more about how you got to pipeline. That does not mean that that is the defining metric for marketing. Pipeline is the, you know, key aligning metric between marketing and sales, but you have to tell a story about the contribution beyond the number. And so for us being able to talk about that non-clinical buyer reach, and we were able to have events that moved from this audience to that audience. We're talking more to them when we're converting. ABM has been a great tool for us, as we have, you know, looked at intent, there's intent number, but then if you look specifically at the non-clinical buyers, there's intent with non-clinical buyers, that's like a gold mine, right? Sales, because now they understand the constitution of the MQL and the pipeline that you're delivering, and so they can do more with it. And so that insight becomes very important.

Drew: Got it. Okay, all right. Well, unfortunately, we have to wrap up, but so final words of wisdom for CMOs, looking to refine their positioning strategy for sustainable growth. Marni?

Marni: Gosh, it's hard to just come up with one word. I mean, the research piece is huge. Otherwise you're shooting in the dark. I think adaptability, which I'm going through majorly right now. And I think the third one would be around, you know what I said before, which is not just thinking about positioning as top of funnel, but throughout the entire marketing funnel and sales life cycle, and so that's something and as particularly, if you want to really show that direct impact revenue growth, you've got to think of it that way.

Drew: Okay? And Sara, final words of wisdom.

Sara: Final words of wisdom, if you're leading a positioning exercise, you're not a marketer, you are a translator and a teacher in the organization. Position, you have to translate a lot of what people are saying into positioning, because there's an art to doing that, and you have to teach people what positioning is and the impact it can have. And so don't forget those elements of the role. It's a lot to balance.

Drew: Yeah, it is, and I love that language. And with the other part that, that I think you made clear, and I'm just going to add to wrap up is that there's a change management aspect to this, because if there isn't, it's just, again, a coat of paint on an old barn. If you really are changing your company and changing your positioning, then you're gonna have to change your organization's approach to go to market. So that is yet another opportunity for CMOs to shine with that. Thank you. Sara Marni, your amazing guests and great sports. Thank you audience for staying with us

 

To hear more conversations like this one and submit your questions while we're live, join us on the next CMO Huddle Studio. We stream to my LinkedIn profile—that's Drew Neisser—every other week.

Show Credits

Renegade Marketers Unite is written and directed by Drew Neisser. Hey, that's me! This show is produced by Melissa Caffrey, Laura Parkyn, and Ishar Cuevas. The music is by the amazing Burns Twins and the intro Voice Over is Linda Cornelius. To find the transcripts of all episodes, suggest future guests, or learn more about B2B branding, CMO Huddles, or my CMO coaching service, check out renegade.com. I'm your host, Drew Neisser. And until next time, keep those Renegade thinking caps on and strong!