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#210: Strategy | Building a Marketing Operating System with the Team at Tenon (Ben Person, CEO & Co-Founder, Jessica Skovira, VP Marketing, & Hannak Rankin, Growth Marketing Manager)

Mon Jan 13 2025

Summary

Podcast Summary: B2B Marketing with Dave Gerhardt – Episode #210: Strategy | Building a Marketing Operating System with the Team at Tenon

Introduction

In Episode #210 of B2B Marketing with Dave Gerhardt, host Dave Gerhardt engages in a deep dive into the complexities of building a robust marketing operating system. Joined by the Tenon team—Ben Pearson (CEO & Co-Founder), Jessica Skovira (VP Marketing), and Hannak Rankin (Growth Marketing Manager)—the discussion centers around creating efficient systems to manage marketing workflows, align goals with business objectives, and enhance team productivity. Released on January 13, 2025, this episode offers actionable insights for B2B marketers aiming to streamline their operations and drive measurable growth.

1. The Necessity of a Marketing Operating System

Dave Gerhardt opens the session by highlighting a common pain point among marketing leaders: managing the overwhelming number of tasks and requests that come their way. He states, “The high-performing marketing teams… have a system behind the scenes, an operating system, something that helps them manage and plan their work” (04:30).

2. Aligning Marketing Goals with Business Objectives

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the critical importance of aligning marketing goals with overarching business objectives. Jessica emphasizes, “Marketing should be aligned and measured against the company objectives. It completely changes the way marketing operates” (17:12). Dave reinforces this by illustrating how misalignment can lead to burnout without achieving meaningful results: “If the company is in the red, marketing can never be in the green” (17:12).

3. Campaign Planning and Taxonomy

The Tenon team introduces the concept of campaign taxonomy as a means to organize and prioritize marketing efforts effectively. Hannah describes the approach of having an evergreen campaign that remains consistently active to “keep the lights on” while also allowing flexibility for targeted, time-bound initiatives (21:22).

Dave shares his experience at Drift, where they maintained an evergreen campaign around conversational marketing, ensuring that all marketing activities were aligned with their core mission (20:37).

4. Prioritization and Use of Playbooks/Templates

Jessica and Dave discuss the importance of developing playbooks and templates to standardize processes, which facilitates scalability and reduces dependency on individual team members. Dave remarks, “If we can just take a step back and slow down and, like, productize this, then we can scale better” (30:26). Hannah adds that templates not only streamline tasks but also serve as training tools, enabling new team members to quickly get up to speed (29:20).

5. Handling Dynamic Environments in Startups

Addressing the challenges of frequent changes in startup environments, the team advocates for flexible planning methodologies. Hannah suggests implementing “staycations” or pauses to allow teams to reset and adapt to new priorities without losing momentum (34:07). Dave echoes this by recommending shorter planning cycles, such as monthly plans, to accommodate rapid shifts (35:00).

6. Sales and Marketing Alignment

The conversation underscores the necessity of synchronizing sales and marketing efforts to prevent miscommunications and ensure unified goal attainment. Dave advises presenting marketing and sales plans collaboratively to foster a sense of partnership: “How can we present this together as one unit?” (41:23). Ellen adds practical rules to manage sales requests, emphasizing transparency and collective prioritization (40:49).

7. Budgeting and Resource Allocation

Ben Pearson highlights the importance of creating budgets that realistically reflect marketing goals. By “driving the math backwards,” teams can ensure that every budget line item aligns with strategic objectives. Hannah concurs, advocating for the elimination of non-contributory expenses to maintain financial discipline (43:02).

8. Setting Brand Goals for Pre-Revenue Companies

Addressing the challenge of setting measurable brand goals for pre-revenue companies, Dave suggests focusing on tangible metrics like free trial sign-ups as initial benchmarks. Ellen recommends linking brand activities to business goals, even if direct attribution is challenging: “Do we know how this affects revenue? Absolutely” (47:33). Hannah further emphasizes the broader impact of branding on aspects like talent acquisition and company culture (48:22).

Notable Quotes

Dave Gerhardt: “The high-performing marketing teams… have a system behind the scenes, an operating system, something that helps them manage and plan their work.” (04:30)
Jessica Skovira: “Marketing should be aligned and measured against the company objectives. It completely changes the way marketing operates.” (17:12)
Hannah Rankin: “We are measured on business goals, not meeting our marketing goals because that's why our marketing goals exist.” (16:22)
Dave Gerhardt: “If we can just take a step back and slow down and, like, productize this, then we can scale better.” (30:26)
Hannah Rankin: “We need to make it so that when things come at you from everywhere, all at once, you can facilitate trade-off conversations.” (22:55)

Insights and Conclusions

The episode reinforces that a well-structured marketing operating system is indispensable for modern B2B marketing teams. Key takeaways include:

Systemization: Implementing systems and templates to manage workflows enhances efficiency and scalability.
Alignment: Ensuring marketing activities are directly tied to business objectives prevents resource wastage and aligns team efforts towards common goals.
Flexibility: Adopting flexible planning cycles and incorporating pauses for adjustment helps teams navigate dynamic market and business conditions.
Collaboration: Fostering a collaborative relationship between sales and marketing departments ensures unified strategies and effective execution.
Measurement: Developing clear metrics tied to business outcomes enables teams to assess the impact of their efforts accurately.
Continuous Improvement: Regularly revisiting and refining processes ensures that the marketing operating system evolves with the team’s needs and market conditions.

By integrating these principles, B2B marketing teams can build resilient, adaptive, and goal-oriented operations that drive sustained growth and success.

Additional Resources

Listeners are encouraged to access the marketing toolkit and resources provided by Tenon through their website, tenanthq.com, and join the Exit Five community at exitfive.com for further support and networking opportunities.

Timestamp Reference

For detailed references, timestamps have been noted next to corresponding quotes and sections in the summary.

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Transcript

Dave Gerhardt (0:01)

Today's episode is brought to you by Paramark. You know, I've interviewed hundreds of marketing leaders here over the years, and the number one thing they've all said they want to solve is marketing attribution.

Ben Pearson (0:12)

That's right.

Dave Gerhardt (0:12)

Measurement, especially in B2B, it's complicated, it's hard to measure. Or is it? That's where Powermark comes in. Their marketing attribution platform helps you understand what's working and what's not in your marketing so you know exactly where to invest your next dollar. Unlike other attribution platforms, Paramark doesn't rely on click attribution. They measure marketing performance without having to see UTM parameters or you having to get into lead attribution fights with your CRO. Paramark uses a combination of marketing mix modeling and incrementality testing to help you drive growth. They analyze your brand at every level, channels, campaigns, geography, and then they use those insights to help you grow. Plus, Paramark is built by a former marketer.

Ben Pearson (0:55)

Their founder and CEO Pranav spent his.

Dave Gerhardt (0:57)

Career coming up as a B2B marketing leader. And he cares about this problem so deeply that he started a company around it to solve solve it. Speaking of Pranav, he has probably one of the best offers I've seen on this podcast for our ads. He's going to give you a free brand assessment for your company. He told us he's willing to meet with you personally and analyze the performance of your brand. It's an incredible offer. Just for listeners of this podcast, you can head over to paramark.com brand-consult to schedule your free consultation with Pranav. He can't meet with everyone, obviously, so it's first come, first serve. But don't wait. If you want this, go now. Trust me, this is going to be worth your time. He's an amazing speaker, top rated speaker at our conference, amazing podcast guest in the past, and he's going to give you his insights on your brand and help you with marketing measurement. Right now, go to paramark.combrand-consult to put your name on the list.

Ben Pearson (1:50)

Today you're listening to B2B marketing with me, Dave Gerhardt.

Jessica (2:04)

1, 2, 3, 4.

Dave Gerhardt (2:09)

All right, hey, everybody, we're here. Ellen Williams can't hear anything because we didn't start yet, but we're starting now, so can you hear me now? Hey. Hello, hello, hello. All right, so I'm here. I just was backstage hanging out with the tenant team. Got the background on how they named the company, which was great. We talked about naming and we Got three of them from the team presenting with me today. It's going to be great. Our whole session is about building a marketing operating system. But before we get into all that, I just want to make sure that you can hear me. Okay. And let me know where you're writing in from, where you're listening in from. Yes, this is going to be recorded. We will always record it. We'll send you the recording after. It's all good. So let me know. Like, I'm Dave. I'm going to write. I'm Dave. Burlington, Vermont. So cool. All right. Hannah's in Atlanta. Oh, that's nice. Hannah's in Atlanta. Billy's in Arizona. Eric's in Austin. Colin is in Boston. What's up, Colin? We're doing Boston meetup, March 2025. Put it on your calendar. Anna's in Austin, Texas. That's my friend right there. What's up, Jenna? Kansas City. Palm Beach. Fort Worth. Brittany from Connecticut. Berkeley, California. Detroit. Minneapolis, Minnesota. How do we do, tenant team? Do we have a global audio? Well, I haven't seen. Oh, there we go. Global. There's Amsterdam, Netherlands. Casey from dc, Michigan, Canada. Boston Meetup calling in from Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Mumbai. Yeah, we're global. Okay, we got everybody here. Ben's here. Ben's a CEO of Tennant, former cmo. One of us. He's in the chat also. All right, so we're going to bring on the Tenon team in a minute, but I just want to give you some context. So once a month, we do these live sessions, and we do them to go a little bit deeper than something that we might do on the podcast or in the Exit 5 community or in our newsletter. But I hope you get all of those resources. We like to bring on a marketer or a group of marketers who have done something that is going to be helpful to you. We've done them about email landing pages, SEO, abm, building a marketing plan. But today we are talking about the topic of the actual work of marketing, because there is something that happens, and I've been a victim of this or I've maybe caused this in teams that I've been responsible for. But a lot of times inside of marketing, there's just so much going on, right? There are so many requests coming in. You got campaigns, you got random ideas from the CEO. You got that event that you're planning for next week. All of a sudden, the head of HR wants to know when the recruiting page is going to be up, Right? Can anybody relate to this? So one of the Keys. One of the things that I've learned from interviewing hundreds of marketing leaders over the last 10 years in marketing, Eleanor and Matt say yes every day, is that the high performing marketing teams, they're not just creative marketing machines. They don't just have great ideas and go and execute on them. They have a system behind the scenes, an operating system, something that helps them manage and plan their work. And this is something that the team at Tenon believes really strongly in. They're building a company around it, but we figured they'd be great to talk about this topic with you to help you manage the work of marketing. So hopefully you get something, one or two new things out of this that are going to help you manage your marketing work, be more efficient, be more productive. And I think this is going to be a great session. So we're going to have a little bit of presentation and conversation. As always, put your questions, be in the chat, helping each other out, adding things to what the speakers say. Put your questions that you have in the Q and A. We're going to have plenty of time for questions. At the end, we'll call up the whole team. We'll hang out, we'll help you with all your questions live. But help each other in the chat and without further ado. All right, Danielle, where's my producer at? In my ear. Let's bring up the tenant team. There we go. We got Hannah, we got Jessica, and we got Ben. So this is the crew here today. We got a great crew. We got a lot of marketing experience right here on this video chat, and I'm excited. So I'm going to hand it over to you. I'll do my best. Everybody's favorite webinar. Not a webinar. Moderator. I'll be right here. But you all got it. I'm happy to have you here. Let's have a great session. Yay.