How to Use Storytelling to Drive Unprecedented Market Demand with Kyle Christensen, VP of Marketing at Zuora

Pipeline Visionaries

This episode features an interview with Kyle Christensen, VP of Marketing at Zuora. Prior to Zuora, Kyle served as CMO of 6Sense, SVP of Marketing at Invoca, and VP of Marketing at Responsys, where he drove the growth of the enterprise business up until the company's $1.5B acquisition by Oracle.

On this episode, Kyle shares his demand gen master plan that starts with a marketing strategy that permeates the entire company and explains why the best brand storytelling attaches you to a narrative of overarching change much larger than the company itself.

Key Takeaways

• How to create a compelling, tactical content strategy that elevates a targeted, account-based approach
• Why you must treat content marketing as a virtuous cycle. By helping your customers succeed and learn from their experiences, you can turn learnings into better roadmaps for the next customer
• How to frame a great company pitch by thinking bigger than your product, your tech, or your business value, and attaching yourself to a narrative of change that’s bigger than your company on its own

Quotes

• “In order to do really great demand, you need to start with a compelling underlying story. Without that, no amount of landing page optimization or keyword spending strategy is going to work. The content and the message are really what drives things.”
• “The way we think about it, this isn't just a marketing strategy, it's a company strategy. And it’s a completely virtuous cycle. The reason to go with us is that we have better data, better insights, and a better product, and we will guide you all the way through to implementation. Then we get access to better data, we find better ways to make our customers successful, and it feeds back into the top of the funnel. We translate that into learnings, content, and assets, and the cycle repeats itself and grows over time.”
• “I think the essence of a good pitch is…what is the overarching change that's occurring in the market–in the world that you're operating–that gives your company a reason for being. The inevitable change that is happening whether or not you exist as a company. I think the best storytelling companies and the best pitch companies start there.”
• “Don't evangelize why you have a really fantastic web-based contact management application (i.e. Salesforce), evangelize that there's a massive sea change somewhere in the world…If you really want disproportionate attention from the market and to attract the right talent, the most eyeballs, the most interest from the media and the press, you need to attach yourself to a larger narrative.”
• “You can't do superficial content, because it’s not interesting. There's so much competition out there now for mindshare and time that you have to invest. You’ve got to have the right people, the right data, and the right narrative that you want to attach yourself to. It's not enough to put out listicles and things like that to drive conversation.”

Sponsor

Demand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

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