How do you connect content creation to actual pipeline and revenue growth?

Katerina Maerefat (00:02) I actually worked with someone which in almost every meeting I had with her would say, what is the problem that we're trying to address? And at first I was like, I don't understand. But the meetings became really tailored and structured and we focused on what's the objective of the meeting. So I think taking a similar approach into deciding that has been helpful in the past. Ben Ard (00:10) Mm. Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Katarina. Katarina, welcome to the show. Katerina Maerefat (00:56) Great to be here, Ben. Excited. Ben Ard (00:58) Yeah, Katarina, this is going to be a great subject. It's something that we both really, really care about. There's so many cool things to talk about. And your experience is just amazing. Like, you have such a fun career. Why don't you catch us up in the audience on your career, who you are, all that good stuff before we dive in, if you don't mind sharing. Katerina Maerefat (01:15) Yeah, of course. So I'll give you the short background. So most of my career has been, so 15 years of marketing experience, about 13 of the 15 is PE backed B2B SaaS companies and a range of industries. So oil and gas is the largest number since I'm out of Houston, Texas, but also been in the e-learning space, supply chain risk management, coming up here in the revenue enablement space. but essentially my role started off as more of a marketing generalist and really evolved into this growth marketing, marketing operations, marketing analytics, marketing technology. So I just really love. I'm very metrics driven. all the techie marketing, nerdy stuff. So, but also have a massive appreciation for. content creative. I should specify that I am by no means like a content writer, but I have a very large appreciation for folks that are especially pre-AI era. Ben Ard (02:20) I love that. That's amazing. Well, Katarina, what we're going to talk about today is from intent to impact creating marketing content that drives pipeline growth. Now, when I hear that and when I think about that, immediately my mind turns to, okay, pipeline growth, how are you measuring that and how is content playing a role? So maybe we can kind of start there. What are you looking at on that front? And then let's dive into the specifics about how we can improve on that front. But What like data are you kind of collecting to kind of show on this front? Like what are the metrics that matter on this area? Katerina Maerefat (02:52) Great question. So with that background and kind of this PE back space, most PE companies have a specific way they want to see data reported for a marketing department. So what they're usually going by is kind of this serious demand waterfall. So they're looking at it from the lens of pipeline generation from a funnel lens, right? Everything from unknown web visitors or potentially third party ways of acquiring contacts legally that have opted in. You've got your top end, kind of this potentially de-anonymized stage down to lead, scoring module usually MQL, SAL, SQL, the fun little acronyms, but essentially going from lead all the way to opportunities generated and then opportunities closed one or closed loss. Ben Ard (03:24) You Katerina Maerefat (03:45) Looking at all the funnel stages and then looking at the conversion between them. So those are super important because the conversion point essentially tells us the health of ⁓ the funnel. So, and of course there's a ton of different KPIs than when you layer it into like, you know, web performance, digital marketing performance, but that's kind of the. the core metrics essentially that we're looking at in terms of pipeline generation and growth. And so what's uniquely important with content and creation, I think is being able to understand the content that you're creating. How is that actually influencing sales opportunities and helping them close? So a lot of companies, I think don't focus on that level of detail. But really getting a firm understanding for that helps you understand what can I keep creating more of to fuel that growth and fuel revenue for the company. Ben Ard (04:45) I love that. So as you've got these pipeline goals and you're generating content to help grow new opportunities, influence the sales experience, really help the whole customer journey. How are you finding out what you should create next? You know, obviously like we can start to look at metrics and we're trying to figure out and say, okay, great. We need to produce better materials that help move deals forward. How are you making some of those decisions? What are you looking at and what's the process for you to know what to build next? Katerina Maerefat (05:15) That's a great question. So in terms of like what data you look at before deciding content. my answer, I hate it, but it's, depends. but kind of layering and taking that a little step further, think just focusing on the importance of aligning on what is the business objective that you're trying to achieve first, prior to just writing the piece of content. So I'll give you some examples like. The reason that you're creating content might be that you need to address a content gap that you don't have within your content. So what helps with that in terms of data is more like a content map. So within that, have you identified what's all the content that you have created? What type of content is it? Is that a video? Is it a white paper? Is it a case study? Is it a top of funnel content piece, bottom of funnel content piece, middle of funnel. What industry does it address if you have a series of ICP industries? So not data in the sense where you think of like a metrics number, but still data that you're creating and ingesting to understand what are my gaps, right? And then being able to map that to the actual content performance, like how many people are viewing. this, how many people are converting, how much pipeline is influenced, then that helps you understand. Okay. Case studies for example, manufacturing, those really help close the gap in terms of opportunities. We need to do more of this type of content and create more lookalike types of content. So that's an example where it's like the metric might not be a typical like data metric that you would think of, but It depends on the objective. pipeline, let's say your objective is something like pipeline progression. So for that, you're going to want to look at the metrics that we talked about a little bit earlier, right? What are your funnels stages? How much are you generating in each of those stages versus your goal? And what does conversion look like? Are they getting stuck somewhere in the funnel and what? kind of content can we create to get them unstuck? So that's more metric in a sense of something like that. And another example I'll give is if you're trying to essentially find some white space to tap into, let's say it's a new market. So we're trying to figure out what type of campaign do I prioritize next? So one example from, one of the companies that I worked at is we were working on developing these always on industry plays. So to address each of our core industries that we know are a good fit for the company. So life sciences, manufacturing, you name it, right? So what we did to figure out, because we can't just create them all at once, how do we help prioritize? So we looked at the leads in the funnel in general. We looked at top end, bottom end. We saw A lot of leads and MQLs top end of the funnel that were coming in work for manufacturing. did a double click. And then we realized that the majority of the closed one opportunities were also for manufacturing. So it's like, well, duh, let's focus on manufacturing first and foremost. So there's lots of different ways, but I think the more than like the data point is obviously important, but taking it back to like, what are, what is the business objective? Ben Ard (08:26) Hmm. Katerina Maerefat (08:42) I actually worked with someone which in almost every meeting I had with her would say, what is the problem that we're trying to address? And at first I was like, I don't understand. But the meetings became really tailored and structured and we focused on what's the objective of the meeting. So I think taking a similar approach into deciding that has been helpful in the past. Ben Ard (08:51) Mm. I love that. That's so cool. So I love that you're looking at the data points that are available, looking at the whole buyer's journey, where are their gaps, where are their opportunities? How is this progressing? How is it influencing? How do I focus on specific industries, personas, things like that, that are actually moving the pipeline? Now, a big part of this though also is collaboration with other departments inside your business. know, marketing, working with sales, working with CS, working with partners, all that kind of stuff. What have you done to kind of help grow the partnership side internally to get everyone working on the same page, whether it's the usage of content, whether it's content ideas, whether it's implementation of content. How do you just align the business around content with all the different kind of stakeholders? Cause it's not just the one department. How do you get everyone involved? Katerina Maerefat (09:54) Great question. And you really need that feedback from the other GTM kind of units to understand what kind of content you need to create, not only to build pipeline, but keep customers or pull data or information from customers to get new customers kind of the whole life cycle marketing approach. But At each of the companies that I've been at, I've actually been kind of the core driver of setting up more in the marketing operations space, but kind of this rev ops unofficial committee. So this kind of weekly touch point where marketing ops, sales ops, occasionally someone from CS ops, all kind of get together to kind of focus on core initiatives. So. big proponent of making sure that GTM is aligned across the board. I also think it's really important to make sure first and foremost, you set up those touch points so that you can not only report out to sales and CS, like what is marketing doing, but get feedback, make it a collaborative effort. For me, what's worked best is hearing that feedback and working well with sales to create content, like not just getting the feedback and just designing based off of that. ⁓ It's a combination of that, coupling that with the metrics, coming to the table with some of the metrics that you're seeing. But I think that when that's done properly and those alignment with your kind of core counterparts is set up, it's more often than not going to be successful and more often than not going to be utilized. Ben Ard (11:36) Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. So I'm fascinated by this committee that you've created, kind of this group of people. How did you identify them? How often do you meet? What are those discussions typically around? You know, I'm curious for any of the listeners to the episode to say, hey, maybe a committee is in order for us to kind of get some key stakeholders. Who are some of like the key players? How does how does this work in? Is it an official thing? Have you even created like swag internally or any of that kind of stuff? I'm kind of curious about that whole system there. Katerina Maerefat (12:08) I love that. have not created swag, but now I'm going to. So what I was referring to is more like in the operations space. So it's like there's usually in sales, marketing and CS at maybe a little bit more mature companies, someone who's focused on the stack that each of them manage and the processes. So essentially pulling kind of the core owners of those. Ben Ard (12:11) You ⁓ Katerina Maerefat (12:35) And setting in place an agenda where we just talk through what are the initiatives that we're working on and especially that you guys should be aware of cross departmentally. And it helps us spot areas of opportunity where let's say, ⁓ sales is rolling out ⁓ a new tool and there's a marketing component to it. How can we kind of work together to get the most value and ROI out of this tool? So, and I'll actually take that. one step further because I think this is so important. The company that I worked at that did it really well is they basically had this senior management group. So they had the C-suite and then they had this senior management group, which was, I think everyone kind of director level and above cross-departmentally. And we met in person, it was a remote company, We met in person ⁓ once a quarter and talked about initiatives and worked on core projects together. were essentially kind of the executional arm. It sounds horrible for the seat. Yeah. So essentially, and then also brought up ideas because we were, people managers. from. Ben Ard (13:37) Out of context that sounds different, Katerina Maerefat (13:47) are people, what are we hearing? Like, how can we do that? And I thought that went a really long way in helping to establish OKRs or objectives for the company that were aligned. And I think the more you can align at the top level, bottom level, map it all the way down, the more that you can be on the same page with what is it we have to do to be successful this next year, this next quarter. Ben Ard (14:16) I love that. That's cool. So I think that's great. I love the committee standpoint, especially on the operational side. You know, how do these tools and resources connect to one another? All that kind of fun stuff. Katarina, we have run out of time. These episodes go by so quick. Thank you for the insights. Thank you for all of the information about how you're driving pipeline growth from content, how you're developing new materials, how you're looking at it, how you're collaborating. That whole process is so important. For anyone who's listening who would like to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you? Katerina Maerefat (14:49) Yeah, definitely look me up on LinkedIn. That's probably the best way to get in touch, but happy to hear what you guys have to say and happy to throw ideas back and forth and collaborate. Ben Ard (15:00) Love it. Well, Katarina, thank you, thank you, thank you for the time and insights today. I really do appreciate it. Katerina Maerefat (15:05) Yeah, thanks, then.