The Journey to Head of Marketing - with Brandon Redlinger, VP Marketing Chili Piper

Brandon Redlinger, Vice President of Marketing joins our host Ray Rike to discuss his journey to becoming the head of marketing for Chili Piper, a leading B2B SaaS company. The topics they cover include:

• The path to VP Marketing and beyond
• The benefit of building a personal LinkedIn brand and following
• The evolution of the B2B SaaS CMO role
• How will B2B Marketing evolve in the AI era

Brandon's first role was as a Sales Development Representative and then as an AE for a few years. Then he discovered his passion for technology and marketing, so he moved to the heart of B2B technology in the Bay Area and has held marketing roles at Demandbase working with Marketo founder, Jon Miller and then moving to Revenue.io and eventually to becoming the Head of Marketing at Chili Piper.

Brandon first built his marketing experience in demand generation at both Engagio and Demandbase, and realized he needed to round out his marketing experience more and made the mode to Product Marketing at Revenue.io - that in retrospect was a good move to broaden his marketing experiences. Those roles were the foundation to becoming the VP of Marketing at Crosschq and now at Chili Piper.

What surprised Brandon the most about his first role as the Head of Marketing? The first was learning how to manage internal politics and knowing how to "play the game" of getting things done and moving forward cross-functionally. Though Brandon initially bristled at the thought of "playing the game" he quickly realized it was about developing cross-functional relationships and communication skills to get peers on board and supportive of the marketing programs and priorities.

Brandon just entered the VP Marketing role at Chili Piper and he shared some of the priority programs and initiatives he is working on first. With the introduction of new products and new ICPs, Brandon identified the need to tie use cases together and came up with the concept of "Demand Conversion" to sell a larger story and not a single-point solution - such as lead routing.

Another key factor in Brandon's journey to becoming the head of Marketing was building his own LinkedIn brand. Brandon initially started his LinkedIn journey by seeing the number of profile visits to Jon Millers profile at Engagio, and he and a colleague started a shared journey to surpass Jon Miller's profile views - which is pretty impressive since Jon was the founder of Marketo and Engagio. The result was being invited to many podcasts as a guest and then being able to transfer that following to the company's brand.

How important was Brandon's LinkedIn presence and following to getting his first and now second head of Marketing role? He says it did for sure and is especially important when the following are the same buyer personas that the hiring company sells their solution.

How has the role of the CMO evolved? It all centers on the availability and usage of all the data to draw insights and then act upon finding the signal amongst all the noise. Brandon is convinced that the success of marketing leaders in the future is understanding and even being able to read and predict where the market is going - not just understanding where it is!

If you are an early career Marketing professional or in your first head of Marketing role, this is a very informative and instructive conversation!

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