Rob Karel, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Precisely, shares over two decades of B2B tech marketing expertise. Rob delves into the evolution of marketing, the art of storytelling, and how startups can effectively balance brand awareness with performance marketing. He explains why understanding your ideal customer profile (ICP) is critical for success and highlights the importance of validating your messaging through customer feedback. Rob also discusses structuring marketing teams, the pitfalls of category creation, and the ultimate metric for marketing success—conversion quality.

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What You Will Learn:

• How to balance brand awareness and performance marketing for maximum ROI
• The art of storytelling in B2B marketing and its impact on long sales cycles
• Why startups should focus on their ideal customer profile early
• The importance of customer feedback in refining messaging
• Key principles for structuring marketing teams at different growth stages

Highlights:

• [08:14] Why good messaging starts with understanding your audience
• [12:35] Storytelling in B2B: Simplifying the complex
• [20:20] The synergy between brand awareness and demand generation
• [24:50] Why competition validates category creation
• [33:15] Wise advice: “If you’re not wrong 20% of the time, you’re not trying hard enough.”

The Wize Ones PodcastThe Wize Ones podcast features leading operators, subject matter experts, VCs, and founders interviewing each other to reveal insights into how they built and scaled their products, software, and ideas. We speak to the top 5% of people in the world of GTM to get first-hand insights, case studies, and real-life examples of what worked and what didn't.

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