Mary Sheehan

I’ve gotten 8 inbounds from CMOs in the last week. What are they asking me for? …… Content help “Do you have a really good content writer you’d recommend?” “I need to create so much content this quarter I need some extra help” I’m going to venture and say scaling content production (volume and speed) is one of the top priorities CMOs are grappling with! 💡 (Myself included 🙋🏻) #content #marketing

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With summer upon us and with sweltering heat everywhere, I figure now is a good time for a hot take on modern marketing measurement Here it is: Meaningful differentiation between MMM solution A vs MMM solution B vs MMM solution C is very hard for the average marketer to discern and so what really matters in picking a solution is the service level that the provider offers. It’s also the case that using and interpreting an MMM properly requires a fair amount of experience and many / most marketers today don’t yet fully have the needed expertise. This reality makes high levels of service and hand-holding from the service provider extra important - and arguably the most important criterion in picking a measurement partner. Agree? Disagree? Sort of agree, but sort of disagree? I’m excited to hear different perspectives!

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One of my favorite elements of marketing is the feedback loop. You can keep throwing stuff out into the world and manifesting greatness, but without actually checking in with the intended audience or buyer, you're playing a lottery. Surveys serve the same purpose. So, my friends at Berkeley Lab need your help with their Smart Building Survey. ❓ Do you manage a portfolio of buildings that contain smart technologies? ➡ This survey targets privately owned smart buildings throughout the United States, including commercial buildings, laboratory facilities, hospitals, multifamily residential buildings, and buildings owned by nonprofit organizations and institutions of higher education. ➡ The purpose of the survey is to assess which advanced building technologies and systems (i.e., smart technologies) found in buildings are most cost-effective and show the most promise for increasing building energy savings, increasing service performance to building occupants, reducing environmental impacts, and establishing cybersecurity. Your feedback is crucial and shouldn't take more than 20 minutes. Survey here: https://lnkd.in/e_fbEzJm Picture of a curious pigeon, thanks Unsplash.

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You know what's *never* a fun topic? Crisis communications. But you know what's so, so much worse than talking about it? Getting blindsided by a crisis, and having to put together a strategy, team, and messaging alllllllll on the fly and under significant stress. Trust me: putting together a plan isn't as difficult of an exercise as you may think, and you'll come out the other side feeling SO much more confident about the future. Here are the major keys: 📕 PREPARATION: Every company should have a solid crisis communication plan. It’s not about if a crisis will happen; it’s about when. A clear, pre-approved communication strategy can make all the difference. 🔎 TRANSPARENCY: In a crisis, honesty builds trust. Employees, customers, and stakeholders need to know what’s happening, what you’re doing about it, and how they will be impacted. (Even if you don't have anything new to share, saying something is better than saying nothing at all.) In my experience, those who communicate effectively in a crisis not only manage the situation but also come out so much stronger on the other side. It's about guiding your team and your organization through the storm with clarity, empathy, and resilience. (Don't want to write a crisis communications plan from scratch? I'll send you our template & a completely filled-out example! ✅ ) #crisiscommunication #internalcommunication

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What’s your favorite “year in review” campaign? Is it really already time to start planning your for one now? “Shoot, no, we’re still in the middle of annual planning we have that big Q4 product launch.” I was just listening to Justine Davis detail why she loved the Spotify Wrapped campaign and was reminded how much work goes into doing that type of campaign well. Especially when November and December evaporate before our eyes Justine is an incredibly bright ans high-impact colleague from Atlassian, and has done a number of viral campaigns in developer marketing. I enjoyed her break down the elements: an integrated campaign, built on data insights, personalized to users, promoted cross channel, and reinforcing the core value of the product. Wrapped builds awareness as people share their highlights on social media - priming the flywheel getting users promoting the company to new users. She reminded me how effective “Yrar on review” can be, and how much work goes into getting it right. Who else does great “year in review” campaigns? Let’s collect some templates to help with our planning. https://lnkd.in/g5fQ9drT #marketing #campaigns #virality

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Today Monday! 9am PT (or if you can't make it, sign up to get the replay). Can't wait to join: - Kipp Bodnar, CMO of HubSpot, - Zach Kitschke, CMO of Canva, - and Jeff Titterton, CMO of Stripe for "A CMO's Guide to AI, efficiency and engagement" ->> How are marketing teams actually using AI in production? ->> What are the biggest obstacles? ->> How do you navigate the changing search and search ad landscape? ->> How should you approach governance, privacy, and safety? ->> How do you get more of your team to adopt and get productive with AI? These are just a few of the questions we'll be answering. Join us! Registration link in the first comment. #AI #CMOs #Bestpractices

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Sneak peek of the most valuable marketing expectation-setting frameworks I've ever used + will be sharing TODAY on Hubilo's WTF News At 1p ET today I'll be joining Blair Arbuckle, Liquid Death's creative mastermind Andy Pearson, Christina Le, and Rashel Hariri to share the playbook on how we used brand awareness principles to effectively create demand for Loxo + what you can do to start driving more demand for your organization. Here's what will be covered: - A story on the difference between brand awareness + demand creation - A timeline for when to expect results - How it ties in with category creation - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - When: TODAY Where: https://lnkd.in/e2dv2DtD Why: because who doesn't want to learn new things???

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🤔 How Would You Recommend a Creator Marketing Agency? Every now and then, friends and colleagues reach out to me for recommendations on creator marketing agencies. It’s a great question, but I haven't found a one-size-fits-all answer. Having been in the industry for four years and managing over $100 million in creator marketing, I've learned that every client brief and agency is unique. It's not about right or wrong, but about finding the perfect match. 🎯 Just to name a few key considerations: 🎯 Objective, Budget, and Niche: Brands come in all sizes, and their objectives span the entire marketing funnel. Creators vary in size and category, each requiring different tactics. Aligning these elements is key to a successful campaign. 🎨 Creative Flexibility: Some clients have strict requirements for scripts, having tested extensively what works and what doesn’t. Others prefer to let creators or the agency take the lead on creative decisions. ⏰ Time and execution: Tight deadlines often mean compromising on certain aspects. It's crucial to balance urgency with quality. 📈 Organic vs. Paid: Some clients focus solely on organic growth, while others seek a comprehensive media plan that includes paid campaigns. Paid campaigns' cost per conversion can vary widely based on creative content and ad settings. So, how do you recommend an agency? Consider the client’s specific needs and match them with an agency’s strengths. And.. 🙋One of my friends is currently looking for an agency for mid-to-large size YouTube creators for collaborations. If you have any recommendations based on past experiences, please leave a comment! 👇 She subscribed this post and will probably ping you!

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📌 Pinterest is having a webinar next week to dive deep on their Performance+ suite of products. You'll be able to hear directly from two Lead Product Marketing Managers as well as a Senior Industry Lead (s/o Jared my old colleague!) What you can expect: • Discover how the suite of Performance+ products can help automate campaigns. • Learn how to create a campaign using Performance+ to drive lower funnel performance. • Follow step-by-step demonstrations on how to analyze and optimize campaign performance. • Receive our free “How to Get Started with Performance+ Guide.” Link to register in the comments 📌 #pinterest #marketing #dtc #ecommerce #performancemarketing

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You can’t market your way out of a bad product. This past week, I watched an influencer-built DTC brand launch its first products—and within days, the whole thing imploded as customers took to social media to voice their frustrations. The hype? Massive. The customer reactions? Brutal. Social media turned into a full-blown roast session, and honestly, it's been painful to watch. (My fellow TikTok ladies know who I'm talking about 🫠) And let’s be real—it’s so easy to start a business these days, especially when you’ve got a massive following. But that’s exactly the problem. Too many people treat it like a shortcut, skipping the hard work of making a product that actually delivers. Honestly? It’s a slap in the face to the companies who pour their blood, sweat, and tears into their products. The ones who live for the details, test until it’s flawless, and grind to make sure their product delivers every single time. They set the standard. No level of fame, no influencer, no campaign, no amount of reach will save you if you can’t deliver on your promise.

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334 brands have signed up for this in the last four months, including HubSpot, The Washington Post, and Clay. Here’s why you should too: The Great Ignore is real and you need a way to stand out from the noise. In today’s world: Nobody wants to be sold to.  Nobody picks cold calls. Nobody clicks on ads. And your buyers are the same. They're not scrolling on Instagram. They're not searching on Google. They’re following real people. They want real connections. With humans. And David Walsh @ Limelight is the new Google for B2B. So… Here’s 4 things you should know: 𝟏/ 𝐁𝟐𝐁 𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐥𝐮𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐫𝐬 > 𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐠𝐥𝐞/𝐌𝐞𝐭𝐚 ↳ Your audience trusts people, not pixels. ↳ Relationships trump interruptions, every time. ↳ Budgets are shifting from search and social to content creators. 𝟐/ 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 > 𝐂𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐬 ↳ 72% of buyers don’t want to talk to salespeople. ↳ Building community = building pipeline. ↳ Gen Y and Z don't click on ads. 𝟑/ 𝐇𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 > 𝐀𝐝 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐝 ↳ Buyers crave relationships, not retargeting. ↳ They're following people, not your company page. ↳ Trust is earned through consistent value, not ad frequency. 𝟒/ 𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫-𝐋𝐞𝐝 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 ↳ Your voice matters more than your ad budget. ↳ Leverage others' audiences to build yours. ↳ Share insights, not sales pitches. So… Be the face of your brand. Yes, YOU. Authentic voices cut through the noise. Here’s how: ↳ Sign up for Limelight. ↳ Find your B2B creator community. ↳ Speak directly to your audience -no filter. ↳ Build your personal brand -it's your biggest asset. This is the next phase of how to build pipeline. Use Limelight to combat The Great Ignore that Mark Kosoglow and the Operator team have released into the wild.  It’s your cheat code. 

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Is your brand ready to MAXIMIZE revenue for Black Friday and Cyber Monday? It’s the biggest shopping season of the year, and you have traffic flooding your site and carts getting filled. But then… boom. They leave. They’re gone. And you have no idea who they are. Sound familiar? Join the club. But here’s the good news: there is a way to fix this. And it isn’t what you think. Instead of throwing more money at ads, which only leads to even more traffic that doesn’t convert, you need to focus on maximizing revenue from the visitors who are already on your site. Right now, you might only be identifying about 15% of those customers. That means a staggering 85% of returning customers or potential subscribers are just slipping away. This is why tools like Retention.com are essential for bringing in additional revenue. Implementing a retention strategy could mean the difference between an average year and an extraordinary one. Let’s make this holiday season your best one yet!

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New product idea for ambitious marketers. Are you in or out? I call it “Profit-led Marketing.” Somewhere along the way, we overcomplicated good mktg. We got lost in vanity metrics: top-line rev, in-platform ROAS, etc. Mktg is hard, but the path is simple: 1) Gross Profit = Sales - Cost of Delivery 2) Cont. Profit = Gross Profit – Mktg 3) Net Profit = Cont. Profit – Fixed 4) If Cont. Profit > Fixed, scale 5) If it helps Net Profit, keep scaling 6) If it hurts Net Profit, spend less; find better Mktg 7) If Cont. Profit < Fixed, cut Delivery, Mktg, & Fixed 8) If Cont. Profit > Fixed, scale; but stay lean always 👊 -- If we build a dead-simple SaaS w Profit-led Mktg updates, would you buy it? Everything you need, on one iPhone screen. Let me know why/why not 🚀

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Google’s third-party cookies phase out leaves no room for mismanagement of data. 🍪 As marketers we must now explore alternative strategies to achieve desired results and address the challenges posed by limitations in data tracking.   To increase conversion, marketers need to look into varying tactics to target customers across content, search and paid looking to ways to offer new users the choice to submit personal information.  Partnership, influencers and review sites are also worth exploring to compensate for the loss of reach via third-party cookies.  At Exclaimer, we've witnessed a growing trend among our customers who are increasingly leveraging personalisation including email signature marketing, to facilitate personalized, one-to-one communication. This approach not only nurtures trust between sender and recipient but also fosters stronger relationships.  Focusing on creating a strong human-centric brand and the personalization of content at scale are no longer luxuries but necessities for standing out. How are you navigating the zero-click world? ⬇️ 

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Right now the lead form my team is using to capture leads has an 80% drop off rate - and I couldn't be more thrilled. 😊 Drop offs are usually considered bad. So why does this big number spark Marie Kondo levels of joy for me? Much like for Marie, in the world of B2B leads, less is often more. A few months ago our marketing and sales team were swimming in a sea of thousands of leads a week, but we had so little information about them that it was impossible to prioritize them accurately and handle them with the speed and attention they required. It was only after we had calls with our leads that we would find out many were completely irrelevant. So we launched a new form and we did a couple of things that to some may have been controversial but that have had astounding results. 1. We made the form longer - we went from a single step form to a multistep form that asked twice the number of questions as the original. This gave us way more insight on the intent and product fit of the leads for our Enterprise solution. 2. We added very specific answer choices to our questions - we did that to show our leads through that specificity that they are in the right place. We will continue to iterate on this experiment, and I can't wait to see what else we can do to optimize this funnel and experience the life changing magic 🧝‍♀️ of tidying it up.

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How do you *really* know if podcast ads are bringing in net new customers? Sure, pixel attribution can capture 70% more podcast-attributed conversions.... But how many of those are truly incremental? Well, Podscale® partnered with Podscribe to find out... "For the large brands we work with, understanding the net-new impact of podcast ads has always been a challenge—especially when they’re spending big on other channels, too." - Natalie Kovac, CEO Podscale® Using Podscribe’s “always-on” incrementality testing, Podscale® was able to finally measure which podcast ad conversions were incremental. Meaning... They wouldn’t have converted without hearing the podcast ad. The Findings? INSANE!  ➡ 58% of conversions driven by podcast ads were incremental, meaning these customers were genuinely net new.  ➡ Up to 2.56x Incremental ROAS, securing over two and a half times return for every dollar spent on ads from net-new customers. ➡ Podcast ads drove a massive +$3.9 million in incremental revenue for some of the fastest-growing DTC brands. Want to see the full story? Check out the case study to learn how Podscale® and Podscribe made it happen → https://lnkd.in/g8_cp4v4 #podcastadvertising #incrementality #dtc #podscribe

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Last week, I talked with 20+ of the smartest CMOs, CROs and demand gen leaders to talk about qualifing and converting demand.  But everyone spent a good chunk of time talking about the role SDRs play in the equation. More specifically, we talked about the current model is broken. Many even went as far as saying the SDR function is dead 💀 𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐒𝐃𝐑𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐛𝐮𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞? You have your most junior employees (many straight out of college) with little to no experience cold calling executives. You have people requesting demos only to get a call from an SDR to "qualify" you, schedule another meeting with an AE, who often requalifies you, does discover, then might schedule yet another call to give you a demo. 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐃𝐑 𝐟𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠? The SDR and marketing teams have a more closely aligned goal than SDRs and sales – feed the top of the funnel to get sales-ready meetings for your AEs. 𝐃𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐞? Having a $100k SDR, $200k AE, $125k SE, $130k CSM, and a $110k Onboarder team up on sub-$10k ACV deals is draining your business. The CAC is too high, CAC payback period is too long, the CAC/LTV ration isn't right, and the GDR/NDR isn't high enough in today's environment. 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡, 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐀𝐈 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐒𝐃𝐑𝐬? There are more tools and tech that make the job of the SDR more scalable and automated. Introduce AI that is nearly as good as SDRs (and often better) at many jobs, and you have a competitive threat to the SDR role. 𝐃𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐧 𝐒𝐃𝐑? The SDR role is seen as an entry-level role used as a stepping stone to a more stable and enjoyable job. You rarely see career SDRs. And it makes sense – it's one of the hardest yet most thankless jobs in the business. 𝐃𝐨 𝐛𝐮𝐲𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐤 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬? With the rise of PLG motions and tools that let buyers see the product before buying, more and more buyers are willing to purchase products (yes, even B2B enterprise products) without even talking to a rep. It's time to rethink the SDR function and how it contributes to demand conversion. 

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💫 Great product marketing makes it easier for buyers to buy. ➡️ messaging and positioning that resonates ➡️ packaging that aligns to expected buying motion ➡️ simple pricing (admittedly this can be harder as you move into enterprise 🙈 )

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Every leader should have a quick hit list of words (or phrases) to remember to help guide day-to-day work. The only rule? Write them in sentence form. Easier to remember! Here's our quick list for the marketing team at Jellyfish. I've stolen more than a few from teams over the years. We share before ready.  We celebrate outcomes, not projects. We have difficult conversations.  We surprise and delight. It’s how we focus, drive change, and launch our ideas. It’s how we elevate marketing to an influencer, not an order-taker. Nobody wants to be an order-take Shoutout to the best team in the biz!

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