How to Create & Own a Category with Optimizely

In the series finale of Exceptions, we go inside the mind (and schedule) of one of the world's top CMOs, Sarah Kennedy Ellis of Marketo. We discuss the acquisition by Adobe, how brand affects her team's work and her own, and why the Exceptions exploration is the most important journey for modern marketers to make today. To our listeners: Thanks for your support of this series! Keep in touch with Drift at drift.com and host Jay Acunzo at marketingshowrunners.com.

In the penultimate episode of Exceptions, we try to move storytelling back from buzzword to core component of our jobs as marketers. What does it take to tell a gripping story? What does a brand story do for a business, and how do we vet and tell stories nobody else is telling? We talk to Contently’s Editor-in-Chief Jordan Teicher to find out.

We've talked to lots of marketers marketing to marketers in this series, but how can we as marketers build a beloved brand in an industry that isn't our own? Today, we talk to the SVP of Marketing at Toast, Kevin Hamilton, to explore what it takes to earn trust in a new community, as they've done with restaurant owners. We touch on hiring, partnerships, events, and other approaches, and we reflect on how to grow an exceptional brand given these unique challenges.

Over the course of this series, we've profiled plenty of companies whose products make sense to most of us in business (not to mention the few companies who have the enviable task of marketing to other marketers -- ahh, the dream, right?). But what if your product is highly technical in nature? How do you market to technical people when your marketers are definitely not? And how do you balance the need to target enterprise decision-makers and frontline developers and technical team leads? All that and more in this episode, featuring the CMO of tech giant Twilio, Sara Varni.

It feels like we say it every day: Marketing is changing. Fast. In this episode, we talk to Workfront's CMO Heidi Melin about what the future of work entails, why we're ill-prepared at most organizations, and what to do about it.

In this episode, we perform a live audit on Jay's workflow (it gets hairy) with Zapier's Head of Certified Experts Program, Jesse Parker, and we're joined by Zapier CEO and co-founder Wade Foster, who helps us uncover the one simple truth that can help solve a ton of problems encountered when scaling a brand.

What if you could generate more business by building a brand that fewer people were aware of, rather than more? This episode runs counter to our conventional wisdom as marketers in the most refreshing way. Tune in to learn more about powerhouse content creator, Animalz, and the story behind their success.

In this episode, hear why every brand is in the business of owning and leading a category in some way. We talk to Optimizely's CMO and their director of product marketing to understand how the company has successfully created and led their category, and we walk away with a few key pieces we can implement to do the same.

Today, we get a rare chance to go inside the process of writing a book with Conversational Marketing author and Drift VP of Marketing Dave Gerhardt. Hear why the company felt it was time to do so, how they plan to promote it (without derailing the team), and more details about the wins, frustrations, regrets, and celebrations companies rarely share publicly.

How do we divide up our time as marketers to build a great brand? Do we know? Do we have a PLAN to do so? In the Season 2 premiere of Exceptions, host Jay Acunzo goes inside SparkToro, the audience intelligence search engine, cofounded by former Moz cofounder and CEO, Rand Fishkin, and Casey Henry, formerly of Moz, HubSpot, and Wistia. The duo explains where brand fits in the earliest days of building a company, and they expose the issues with how most marketers spend time, especially when it comes to audience development and customer research.