My Work
Beginning as a marketing intern in 2015, I've had the pleasure of working in every role that makes up a typical team - that's allowed me to appreciate the full buying journey from building a strategy to executing campaigns.
Here's what that looks like.
Have any questions or want to learn about my own company, theorytwenty7 tech marketing?
Positioning
i-nexus - April 2021, May 2022, November 2023
Returning to i-nexus gave me a chance to chart a new direction for the business and galvanize shortcomings in the GTM strategy.
Beginning with detailed desk research, I embarked on a journey involving competitors, internal stakeholders, analyst calls, and prospect & customer conversations. This produced six core personas (and 10 more supporting cast members) covering three new use cases to bring clarity to our new proposition.
The results fed our new marketing strategy, updating messaging, shaping our Marketing Automation and CRM, and an on-going shift to vertical positioning with manufacturing, pharma, automotive, and financial service organizations.
But, crucially, the shift was felt beyond GTM. With the new position came a reset of our purpose - covering our vision, mission, and values - allowing the voice of our customers to flow from first interview into everyone's daily work.
Other examples
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Purpose
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Marketing strategy
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GTM planning
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Analyst relations
Meet Stephanie and co. - who guides all
marketing with their wants, needs, and dreams
Direction setting
Rebranding i-nexus
i-nexus - February - November 2022
A strategic program addressed within the first six months of my return to i-nexus centered on the positioning. From this came the need to rebrand.
The new i-nexus needed to align to the positioning realized, but more importantly, remove the inconsistencies between marketing, sales, customer success, and the Cx.
It was crucial to have i-nexus remove market perceptions of a brand that had become outdated. The time had come to show more of the product, giving buyers more of what they expect from a vendor and to appear less like a consultative service.
Focusing in on the Hoshin Kanri use case differentiation, the logo was the first item treated, with the "x" illuminated in the typeface, tying into the x-matrix tool that was exclusive to i-nexus.
Next was the name. i-nexus is a strategic planning and execution tool, but the strapline didn't express this. Moreover, removing any wording that would pigeonhole the software was necessary with a new product coming down the line. The result was "strategy software."
The new website, built from scratch, heavily consulted Gartner in weaving new messaging, buyer personas, and best practices on conversion rate optimization to create a site that increased average contact to form submission conversion rates from 1.8% to 6.5% within one month.
From there, new colors were introduced to breathe life into the identity, and isometric graphics were replaced as a cost-saving move and one which brought the spotlight back on what matters to a SaaS - getting the buyer closer to the product.
A company-wide launch was given, with presentations, a run-through of the new website, and a brand website to support the rollout, including guidelines and an entire refresh of the sales toolkit.
A post-launch roadmap continued the momentum.
The old brand was outdated and disconnected from what buyers experienced from our competitors and sought to address inconsistencies within different stages of the i-nexus buying experience.
The new brand updates the visual identity of i-nexus, and ocuses on differentiation, but more importantly, is consistent with buyer expectations and positioning throughout the pipe.
The brand guidelines website brings together all assets and information needed to ensure consistent application of the brand - including templates, logos, colors, and tone of voice.
When Sodexo acquired Motivcom, home to more than five competitor brands in their space, I oversaw the rebrand of 100+ pieces of demand and lead generation assets, a new sodexoengage.com, and harmonized three HubSpot portals, ahead of a full public relaunch.
When Cablecom acquired WarwickNet and Glide, I was part of the Business proposition which integrated product offerings from across the organization, overseeing the build of the new glidebuisness.co.uk, and equipping field and telesales with newly branded collateral and a HubSpot portal.
Branding
Inbound marketing
Sodexo - 2016; Glide - 2018; i-nexus - 2020
Core to my growth engine is one concept - inbound. While a straightforward idea, many moving parts must come together and sing harmoniously to drive results.
SaaS and technology lend themselves well to this approach, but we naturally resist change. My method is to share Marcus Sheridan's "They Ask You Answer" to give a direct, real-world application of inbound, back this up with HubSpot content, and create an inbound purpose statement (which I include in every marketing slide deck).
Inbound works. It always has, and I believe it always will. By combining clear positioning and personas with SEO, you can create a sustainable growth machine through organic, supplement with paid, and support the entire buying journey with great, engaging content.
The shift can be hard, involving considerable effort spent engaging stakeholders - from the Cx down to SDRs and customer services - but the results speak for themselves:
Other examples
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Website creation / rebuild
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SEO
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Content
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PPC
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Influencers
50+ pieces of content created in 12 months, mapped to buying journey of core personas in three product offerings
133% increase (60-140) of SQLs and 71% increase of monthly web traffic in four months (1,400 to 2,400)
Built 2021 pipe of $2,128,551 vs 2020's $1,056,886, and grew average monthly organic traffic 1,514 (2020) to 2,018 (2021), to 3,078 (2022), 4,513 (2023), 5,048 (2024)
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Community
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SDR
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Marketing automation
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Content syndication
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Events
Marcus Sheridan's book is the key to introducing inbound
Raising awareness
Campaigning framework
Sodexo - 2017; Glide - 2020; i-nexus - 2022
No reliable, scalable growth engine has one route to market, and operates via one channel.
From content to PPC, lead nurturing to ABM, SDR to BDR work, a lot is going on between lead and demand generation. That's why a logical step to creating interest is devising a framework that allows all the elements to co-exist.
Campaigning frameworks allow me to take the best of my strategic and operational brain. It's here where I get to go into detail on what goes on inside the marketing machine, and create playbooks that work on a simple equation:
Targeting + Content + Effort + Budget = Results
Inside the framework:
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How demand and lead gen co-exist
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Goals and budget ratios
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Data capture strategy
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Advertising, gated content, ungated content
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SDR and BDR guidance (inc. email, social, and calling how-tos based on best practices)
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Campaign programs
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Systems coordination
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Daily management and on-going dashboards
A copy of a playbook is available upon request at james@theorytwenty7.io.
The Glide framework was key to helping the business move from a desk-based telesales approach, creating organic traffic growth to the website with thought leadership content, but also ads towards money pages, and equipping BDRs and AEs with sales enablement tools.
The i-nexus framework enabled marketing to build additional efforts in lead and demand generation & ABM while not losing focus on its main generators of business - content and PPC. The result is a fully operational SQL generating machine, feeding sales high quality, engaged, leads who trust the brand.
Creating a framework is essential to feeding leads from marketing, lead generation, and demand generation.
Creating interest
HubSpot
Sodexo - 2016; Glide - 2018; i-nexus - 2020-23
A robust and complimentary marketing tech stack is central to scaling marketing operations. HubSpot is always the starting point. Marketing, sales, and customer success working within this system create a continuous feedback loop on positioning, revenue generation, sales cycles, and customer evangelism.
My HubSpot portals at Sodexo, Glide, and i-nexus have incorporated positioning and created invaluable first-party data that everyone - from SDRs to CEOs - utilizes.
Across contacts, companies, and deals, you find a shared information system including:
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Buyer personas
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Use cases
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Planning and financial periods
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BANT qualification
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SDR sequencing and playbooks
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Competitor information
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Lead quality scoring (objective [Marketing] and subjective [Sales])
And with HubSpot at the heart of the revenue engine, you find:
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Automated onboarding and G2 comms
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Coordinated landing pages, email, blog, and social content promotion
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Chat flows
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Targeting lists of MQLs and PQLs for ads
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Marketing ROMI tracking
Within my tech stacks, I also include:
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Moz for SEO
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HubSpot for MAS, CRM, and CMS
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Demandbase, Expandi, Cognism, and SalesNavigator for lead + demand generation and ABM
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G2, Trust Radar, and Gartner Digital Markets for reviews and social proof
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Smartsheets, i-nexus, Google Data Studio, and HubSpot for projects, daily management, reporting, and countermeasure actions
With this system feeding in and out of Demandbase, WordPress, Expandi, SaleNavigator, Cognism, and other critical marketing software, it creates a single point of truth for revenue growth information and activities.
HubSpot acts as the central location for everything revenue generation and allows for a constant flow of information across the GTM teams I have worked in.
Marketing technologies
G2 crowd
i-nexus - 2021-24
With middle to bottom of the funnel content providing information on building or buying software and checklists on how to choose a vendor, a weak spot for i-nexus was the voice of the customer.
The main challenge was creating new case studies, given the sensitive nature of data used in the system and a limited pool of contacts from which to generate new proof points.
Consulting Gartner, it was clear that too many vendors focus on the product, not the end user. It was not only an Achilles heel for ourselves but that too for our competitors.
My strategy to remove these limitations was to invest in a G2 membership with a 12-month roadmap to take i-nexus from ~three reviews to 50.
With hitting that milestone came the ability to leverage these reviews across the buying cycle - mainly by creating desire in the decision-maker and driving greater trust and credibility with our prospects.
To achieve this, we invested heavily in featuring G2 reviews across all collateral, grouping these by industry, persona, and use cases - all with the aim of resonating with our buyers.
The result is $100,000 ARR attributable to G2 - demonstrating that the most powerful influencer today are the voices of our peers.
G2 reviews allowed i-nexus to create social proof - something sorely missing in its previous go to market efforts.
In just one year, the G2 review campaign generated 50+ reviews while positioning i-nexus as a High Performer and 2x Best Support badge holder.
Establishing desire
Aligning marketing and sales
Sodexo - 2016; Glide - 2018 + 2020; i-nexus - 2021-24
Traditionally, Marketing and Sales do not act as one. We're from Mars; they're from Venus. But, after reading Jeff Davis' "Creating Togetherness" and working with the Manager Director of an inbound marketing agency, I knew I could help create a world where the two are one.
At Glide, this was put into action by working hand in hand with the Head of Sales as we embarked on transforming a field-sales team into a telesales team as part of a business model change. This involved training on products, SDR, and BDR playbooks and joining calls to feed the customer's voice into our messaging.
And at i-nexus, I took this to the next level. My relationship with the Head of Sales is one of collaboration and openness. That mentality allowed Marketing to bring demand generation - and BDR work - under our umbrella to enable sales to focus on pre-sales, AE work, and deploying the solution.
Marketing supported sales' transition from Salesforce to HubSpot Sales, including sales in all planning of campaigns.
But, the two biggest examples of this collaboration come in automating pre-demo and post-demo comms (to drive show-up rates and create post-demo urgency) and marketing completing SDR work.
Unlike "traditional" marketers, I took the opportunity to dedicate one day a week to SDR work. Telephoning, social prospecting, and email sequencing, the SDR work allows Marketing to build closer relationships with MQLs, and to see these MQLs be converted to SQLs.
The results are clear. Within two months of this exercise, marketing created an average of 4 SQLs a month vs. the 2 SQLs an agency was generating from 20 days prospecting each month.
And to close the loop, marketing joins that SQL throughout their buying cycle - further enhancing the relationship with the market and our Sales team.
Our SDR tools enable the Marketing team to scale internal SDR work, bringing us closer to the market and Sales.
Generating action
Product Led Growth
i-nexus - 2022-24
Every good marketing engine should evolve. For me, creating an inbound marketing system is only the beginning.
As more companies enter markets, buyer maturity nudges closer to the chasm, making converting interest from inbound, lead and demand generation, and even account-based marketing harder.
The time had come to change as the economy slowed down in late 2022. This created the unique scenario of high levels of engagement in the database (78% of the 14,000 contacts were engaged vs the previous year's 45%) but low conversion of MQL to SQL.
That's where product-led growth came in.
i-nexus' product came with many limitations for a see it, try it, buy it approach. But, through bringing together sales, product, customer success, and cloud ops, marketing led the charge to introduce trials to the GTM.
The result was the creation of Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) - a different level of market interest where contacts engage with the product through on-demand demos, trials, and test-drives, all with the aim of giving buyers earlier access to the product.
These PQLs had direct engagement with Sales, and helped focused internal prospecting in a lean budgetary period to create invaluable feedback and pipe revenue.
The plan to practice offer gave our highest value MQLs the opportunity to get inside the software and experience immediate value vs. going through a classic discovery and demo cycle.
Cementing desire
Project portfolio management
Glide - 2018-19 + 2020; i-nexus - 2021-24
Work without structure can produce results, but scaling that across teams and organizations is near-impossible.
But, if you create best practices, guidance, and systems that allow teams to plan, deliver, and optimize their work, you can increase happiness and engagement within your department.
That's why I make project management a core skill in my teams. Not because my role is to keep tabs on every single action but to empower team members and encourage a critical eye on all that we do.
That begins by creating portfolios (e.g., brand, demand generation, lead generation, customer marketing, sales enablement) and building out projects which ensure we can achieve our goals on target and budget.
Weekly meetings revolve around projects, risks and issues, metrics, and ideation. This gives everyone a voice and means we can plan for every scenario. Those scenarios may include budgetary changes, product tweaks, or reduced team capacity.
And, when things don't go to plan, we create countermeasure projects which identify what's gone wrong, why we believe that to be the case, and then what we can do about it (and keep track to apply again in the future).
Whether managing two or nine, this approach ensures my teams are accountable, pragmatic, and think creatively.
The bowling chart is a visual daily management tool, using a traffic light system to highlight trends that need to be addressed in stand ups.
By managing projects by portfolio, we can capture ideas, actions, and maintain progress towards our goals at all times.
Managing marketing
Leading and scaling
Sodexo - 2016-18; Glide - 2018-19; i-nexus - 2019-20 + 21-24
Managers do not manage; they lead.
Whether a Marketing Assistant starting in the field or a Sales Development Representative, I have had the honor of scaling teams.
My experience ranges from a team of two to a team of eight, covering roles like:
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Marketing Assistant
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Marketing Executive
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Copywriter
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Sales Development Representative
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Business Development Representative
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Campaign Manager
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Community Manager
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Brand Manager
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Events Manager
Working with an array of people in my teams has allowed me to get the basics of leading correct. A shared purpose, clear goals, and the openness and support to succeed by failing. This creates a togetherness and continuous improvement culture that allows empowers my team and makes marketing a center of excellence in every company.
I have the experience of the "doing," the tough times of missed targets, the challenges of aligning sales and marketing, and the highs of all we do in.
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If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.
Simon Sinek