The One Thing Marketers Need to Succeed

Develop a corporate strategy based on the GRIT marketing method.

Most companies and executives don’t really understand what marketers bring to the table. A marketer’s efforts are often unknown and unrecognized and the people are often misunderstood or misrepresented. To some, the role of a marketer is often interchangeable – lumped up into one single role – if they’re a marketer, then surely they can write or build a website. As a result, the outcomes that they are judged on are often just based on the basic and non-essentials, and marketing has become one of the roles or departments that have been considered non-essential.

But is marketing really non-essential? As you will see in the interview, it’s the exact opposite. Marketing is the ultimate cross-functional organization that often acts as the underbelly of the whole company. Their influence extends throughout the whole organization, and their contributions greatly affect the success (or failure) of the company.

Leaders and executives need to understand that they need to empower their marketers. They need to have a go-to-market strategy in place. It’s more than just the mission and vision of a company. There has to be a commitment to a set plan to bring in more leads and drive growth and revenue to the organization.

What are the signs of a successful marketer? How can marketers make it clear what it is they bring to the table? What is the one thing marketers need to succeed?

In this episode, Christina Del Villar sheds more light on this topic and shares with us the one thing marketers need to succeed (and several more).

Christina Del Villar is a Chief Market Officer, focused on go-to-market strategy. She was born and raised in the Bay Area, specifically San Francisco and Mill Valley. Then spent a few years in Oregon for undergrad, and made her way back to Silicon Valley.

Christina has an older brother, divorced parents and have had a myriad of pets, including cats, dogs, bunnies, turtles, fish, rats, and a hamster named Kiwi that made a great escape once into the dorm elevator in her rollie ball. The gig was up after that.

Christina was lucky enough to grow up in the Bay Area and spent 30 years in Silicon Valley as a marketing executive and strategist. Growing up she wanted to be a fighter pilot, but alas women weren’t allowed at the time, which was probably fine because she’s not very good at following orders. Instead, she likes to lead. Lead marketing. Lead go-to-market strategy. Lead companies to successful fundraising rounds and exits.

Christina started her career working at Stanford University in the Petroleum Engineering Dept. She marketed and ran several of their research programs that worked directly with the government. While there, their form of communication with their funders was a little know thing called the world wide web and everything had to be coded in HTML. She thought, wow this is going to be big! So she left the academic world and started her path with marketing and go-to-market strategy with start-ups. She got to work with Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, Sebastian Thurn and more industry luminaries. After 30 years, she wrote a book on the methodology she had created and used with the companies she worked for. The rest is history (or a non-fiction book called Sway).

She is most proud of the dozens of companies she has helped to not only achieve their revenue goals, but double, triple and sometimes ten times their revenue, all while building processes for predictable revenue growth. But she’s even more proud that 98% of the people that have worked for her would do so again (and again).

She semi-retired to Reno-Tahoe area mostly so she could travel, hike, bike and swim 

whenever she wants to. That said, she is working on book #2 (teaser – working title is “Drive: How to Get to Predictable Revenue Growth”) and she is starting a software company (in between hikes and travel of course). And currently keep company with her two cats Jyn Erso and Rey Skywalker.

Podcast Timestamps/Outline

01:33 – Introduction

03:05 – About Christina Del Villar

04:00 – Most people think that marketing is non-essential

06:50 – The sales cycle affecting marketing

11:56 – You need to market the marketer

13:38 – What is GRIT?

22:58 – Common problems with go-to-market strategies

28:37 – Problems with data

31:06 – Marketing being the ultimate cross-functional organization

35:10 – The customer journey is a swirly, twirly, hot mess

38:19 – The difference between the customer journey and the buyer’s journey

40:34 – Map of influence

42:25 – If you had a million dollars as a marketer, what would you do with it?

43:52 – What kind of marketing technology does a company need?

46:56 – What does the future of marketing look like?

49:50 – Connect with Christina Del Villar

Memorable Quotes

“It’s actually more strategic to say no in some cases than it is to say yes.”

“You don’t necessarily need something new. You need to be super efficient and concise with what you have.”

“Consistency is critical. Quality versus quantity is key.”

“Everything you do should be done with intention.”

“Marketing is the foundation of any company or corporation.”

“The more you can automate, the better it will be.”

Episode Links and Resources

Christina’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinadelvillar/

Christina’s website: https://christinadelvillar.com/

Digital activity ROI assessment: https://b2bdm.com/digital-activity-roi/ 

More episodes related to go-to-market strategy: https://b2bdm.com/b2b-companies-go-to-market