Podcast Summary: Making It with Jon Davids

Episode 166: "This was a $2B company with no marketing" | Kimberly Storen, CMO at Zayo
Release Date: January 24, 2025

In Episode 166 of "Making It with Jon Davids," entrepreneur and investor Jon Davids engages in an insightful conversation with Kimberly Storen, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at Zayo. This episode delves into Kimberly's remarkable journey of transforming Zayo's marketing function from non-existent to a pivotal component of a $2.5 billion technology powerhouse. Below is a detailed summary capturing the essence of their discussion, enriched with notable quotes and structured into clear sections for an engaging read.

1. Introduction to Kimberly Storen and Zayo’s Marketing Evolution

Jon Davids opens the episode by introducing Kimberly Storen, highlighting her role in building Zayo's marketing team from scratch within a large, established company. (00:00) Kimberly joined Zayo at a time when the company, despite its substantial valuation, lacked a cohesive marketing department. Her mission: to establish a unified marketing function and drive the company's growth beyond mere acquisitions.

JD: "When you come into a $2 billion plus company and have to build a marketing team from scratch..." (00:00)

2. Initial Challenges and Strategic Foundations

Kimberly recounts her first days at Zayo, detailing the fragmented state of the existing marketing efforts. The company had disparate groups handling investor relations and limited product marketing, but lacked a unified strategy to communicate with a broader audience.

Kimberly Storen: "We brought together those disparate groups, creating one global marketing function, and built up the team and capabilities from there." (01:12)

She emphasizes the necessity of training teams who previously lacked formal marketing experience, transitioning their focus from investor communications to broader brand messaging aimed at customers and prospects.

3. Building from the Ground Up: The First Six Months

The first six months were pivotal for Kimberly, focusing on foundational elements crucial for modern marketing operations. She prioritized establishing a functioning website, which was initially a headless CMS unmanageable by the marketing team and lacked SEO capabilities.

Kimberly Storen: "The website was a headless CMS that nobody could change... it was a series of PDFs on the Internet." (02:57)

JD: "They don't even have a functioning website. They've got PDFs on the Internet." (05:17)

Recognizing the website as the cornerstone for demand generation, Kimberly and her team swiftly overhauled it, enabling content updates, improving SEO, and laying the groundwork for future marketing campaigns.

4. Implementing Demand Generation and Marketing Strategies

With the website operational, Kimberly expanded Zayo's marketing efforts beyond events—an area where the team already had some experience. She introduced comprehensive demand generation strategies, including content marketing, paid advertising, and enhanced digital communication tools like chatbots.

Kimberly Storen: "We really had to build content marketing and demand gen from scratch... all of those pieces really had to stand up from scratch." (10:50)

She highlights the importance of verticalizing content to address specific pain points within the enterprise market, thus shifting Zayo from a commoditized service to a differentiated solution provider.

5. Measuring Success and Aligning with Sales and Product Teams

Kimberly discusses the metrics used to evaluate the effectiveness of the marketing strategies implemented. Instead of relying solely on direct attribution (e.g., clicks to revenue), she focuses on broader business drivers such as pipeline contribution, deal size, and velocity.

Kimberly Storen: "When marketing is involved, the deals are bigger and the deals move faster." (14:36)

She underscores the collaborative relationship with sales and product leaders, who now actively advocate for greater marketing investments based on the tangible impacts observed.

Kimberly Storen: "My sales leader and my product leader are now advocating for marketing... saying we should be investing more." (17:49)

6. Kimberly's Diverse Background and Transition to Marketing Leadership

Jon Davids probes into Kimberly's career path, noting her extensive experience in investor relations, crisis communications, and management consulting before transitioning into high-level marketing roles at AMD and Dell. This diverse background equipped her with a unique problem-solving perspective essential for building marketing functions in large organizations.

Kimberly Storen: "Marketing and brand problem is not a marketing and brand problem, it is a business problem." (27:46)

Her ability to navigate complex challenges and integrate marketing with broader business strategies has been instrumental in her success at Zayo.

7. Current Marketing Philosophy and Strategic Focus

Kimberly articulates her overarching philosophy: marketing must serve as both the voice to and from the market. This involves understanding customer needs, anticipating market trends, and ensuring that marketing initiatives align with business objectives.

Kimberly Storen: "My job is to be the voice of and the voice to the market." (33:10)

She emphasizes the importance of strategic thinking over tactical execution, coaching her teams to understand the "why" behind their actions to ensure alignment with the company's growth aspirations.

8. Future Outlook and Industry Insights

Looking ahead to 2025, Kimberly shares her perspectives on the evolving marketing landscape. She advocates for simplification of marketing tech stacks, skepticism towards certain marketing frameworks like Account-Based Marketing (ABM), and the necessity for marketing leaders to guard the integrity and strategic value of the marketing function.

Kimberly Storen: "The whole ABM category is kind of created by vendors to sell more crap to marketers." (37:06)

She warns against submerging marketing under Chief Revenue Officers (CROs), arguing that such structural shifts can dilute marketing’s strategic role and long-term impact.

Kimberly Storen: "We're still seeing a lot of separation of brand and demand... shoving marketing under CROs is a terrible move." (40:03)

9. Distinguishing Sales and Marketing Roles

Finally, Kimberly delineates the distinct roles of sales and marketing within an organization. While sales focuses on immediate revenue and short-term pipeline, marketing is tasked with nurturing long-term pipeline growth and establishing a strong brand presence that facilitates sustained business growth.

Kimberly Storen: "Sales job is this quarter revenue, next quarter pipeline. Marketing's job is next quarter pipeline and beyond." (40:17)

She positions marketing as an enabler for sales, ensuring that prospects are well-prepared and nurtured throughout the complex sales cycle.

10. Conclusion

Jon Davids concludes the episode by appreciating Kimberly’s comprehensive insights into scaling a marketing function within a large enterprise. Kimberly’s journey at Zayo serves as a powerful testament to the transformative impact of strategic marketing leadership.

JD: "Kim, so insightful. I really appreciate you sharing with us today." (41:57)

Key Takeaways:

• Strategic Foundation: Building a cohesive marketing function requires unifying disparate teams and establishing clear mission, vision, and values.

• Holistic Demand Generation: Effective marketing goes beyond events to include content marketing, digital advertising, SEO, and comprehensive communication tools.

• Collaborative Metrics: Success in marketing is measured through broader business impacts like pipeline growth, deal size, and velocity, rather than direct attribution alone.

• Integrated Leadership: Marketing must work closely with sales and product teams, advocating for its strategic role within the organization.

• Future-Forward Thinking: Simplifying marketing tech stacks and maintaining the strategic autonomy of marketing functions are crucial for sustained growth.

• Distinct Roles: Clearly defining the roles of sales and marketing ensures that each function can effectively contribute to both short-term and long-term business objectives.

Kimberly Storen’s experience underscores the importance of adaptable, strategic marketing leadership in driving substantial business growth and transforming organizational capabilities.