Episode #1: Legends of GTM - Jon Miller
I chat with the co-founder of Marketo, who pioneered both lead generation and ABM.
Let's take a walk back in time to 2005.
B2B marketers rely on expensive on-prem software that requires a lot of IT support.
A company called Eloqua is creating a category for this new-fangled thing called "Marketing Automation," offered as a SaaS product. It's super cool but hard to use.
Jon Miller and his co-founders think they see a better way. So they create a software company called Marketo.
Jon likes to write and knows he wants to grow the company through a new thing called content marketing. He starts blogging before the developers have even written a line of code. His "Definitive Guides" to marketing automation topics become legendary...
Marketo was my personal entrance into the world of Revenue Operations, so I was really glad I could have Jon as one of my first guests on RevOps FM. It seemed only fitting to publish this as my first podcast episode.
Jon's story is about the rise of MarTech as a category and the huge shifts that have taken place in B2B go-to-market strategies over the past 15-20 years.
We go deep inside the marketing machine at early-stage Marketo and talk frankly about why this playbook generally isn't working well today.
We also cover:
• Jon's pivot to ABM and founding of Engagio ("fishing with spears")
• The rise of marketing operations and what MOPS needs to do to become more strategic
• Jon's take on RevOps
• What Jon sees coming next in GTM and the potential impact of AI
If you're someone that lived through this era, this episode will bring back some memories and hopefully help you retrace your steps between then and now.
If you're newer to the space, it will provide a lot of context for why B2B marketing is the way it is today.
I'm a big believer that you need to understand where you've come from to understand where you are.
P.S. I'd love your feedback on this first episode - positive or constructive. I want each one to be as engaging and interesting as possible.
Show Notes
B2B Marketing can be broadly grouped into eras based on specific go-to-market strategies that were dominant at the time.
Today's guest played a pivotal role in the development of not just one but two (!) of these era-defining strategies: lead generation / content marketing and account-based marketing (ABM).
About Today's Guest
Jon Miller was the co-founder and first CMO of Marketo, CEO of Engagio, and CMO of DemandBase.
From Jon's LinkedIn: "Jon has played a pivotal role in shaping the world’s most disruptive marketing technology platforms, with a focus on thought leadership, category creation, and strategic go-to-market."
Key Topics
[01:30] - Founding of Marketo, positioning against Eloqua
[5:25] - Jon's early use of content marketing, around the same time as Hubspot. Definitive Guides.
[10:45] - Marketo's early revenue process. Lead scoring. SDR qualification.
[13:50] - Issues with the lead generation model.
[21:13] - Rise of ABM. Founding of Engagio. Relationship with Terminus and DemandBase. Flip My Funnel. Acquisition of Engagio.
[29:06] - Effectiveness of ABM. Challenges. Importance of seeing ABM as a spectrum vs. a binary.
[34:05] - Jon's axioms of marketing
[35:50] - Development of marketing operations. RevOps. What marketing operations needs to do to be more strategic.
[45:05] - What's next in GTM? Potential impact of AI.