Maryling Yu

"Everyone has AI. Not Everyone Has Credible Data." Amen to that! Read today's blog from Seerist CEO Alexander (Alex) Berry on how to make sure your AI driven decisions are grounded in truth!

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B2B marketing budgeting and forecasting is a new drama theater because of the attribution gaps. CFOs and leadership expect CMOs to present leads and marketing-sourced revenue to justify budgets aligned with their CAC targets. Can't prove leads/pipeline? Cut! But there is our fault as well. Jon Miller nailed it down at our Full-Funnel Summit: "We treated marketing like a gumball machine. I would go to my CFO and say if we need to double the number of leads, then I'm gonna need to double my budget. We taught them to think you put a quarter in, you get an MQL out." The reality we all know: B2B buyer journey is happening across multiple channels and touchpoints. But CRM only captures the last touchpoint, creating a false picture of what actually drives deals. This attribution gap is why marketing gets blamed for pipeline misses when the real issue is measurement, not performance. Here's what's working for me to stop the attribution debates and build partnership with CFO. 1.SET UP A BLENDED ATTRIBUTION MODEL. - Self-attribution («How did you hear about us?» - field in your webforms) - Touchpoints that were identified in the digital analytics (ideally, set up end-to-end analytics) - Customer interviews (ask about the main interactions with your company) 2.BOOK A MEETING WITH CFO AND SUGGEST SOLVING AN ATTRIBUTION & CAC QUIZ TOGETHER. Present a recent deal analysis with multiple touchpoints. Example: 1. Buyer discovers us through webinar promoted in our newsletter 2. Sales rep sends cold email cadence to the buyer, no reply. 3. Buyer shares content from the webinar internally 4. Decision-maker engages with content on LinkedIn 5. Decision-maker meets our sales rep at conference, agrees to reconnect, but doesn't reply to sales follow-ups 6. Decision-maker reads several case studies on the website 7. Buyer independently reaches out to a few clients for reference 8. Buyer sends an email to a sales rep asking for a discovery call Now, play a quiz with your CFO: - Which touchpoint gets attribution credit? - Is this marketing-sourced or sales-sourced opportunity? - How do we calculate CAC across multiple channels? - What's the ROI of that untracked reference call? 3.AGREE WITH CFO AND LEADERSHIP ON TWO TYPES OF REPORTS. Program Report: Define together leading and lagging indicators: - Account coverage metrics - Pipeline influence - High-intent website activity - Discovery calls generated Pipeline & Revenue Report: Dashboard with key revenue metrics: - Sales opportunities - Win rates - Average contract value - Sales cycle length - Pipeline velocity - Revenue 4) AGREE ON BUDGET/CURRENT REVENUE RATIO, AND REPORT ON IT. The result: Your CFO understands the complexity of B2B attribution. You develop together meaningful attribution and define the right metrics. Conversation shifts from "prove me it's marketing-sourced" to allbound revenue. Curtain 🎭

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Author Michael Watkins reveals the 3 critical mistakes keeping CMOs stuck in tactical mode instead of leading strategically. You'll learn how to shift from reactive execution to enterprise thinking, why most marketers fail at long-term strategy (and how to fix it), and how to apply the RPM model (Recognize, Prioritize, Mobilize) to level up your entire marketing org. ➕ Plus, discover why the future belongs to leaders who embrace shared leadership over central control. Listen here ➡️ https://bit.ly/4nPVJxJ

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Big news! Uptempo has acquired OptiMine.  Their MMM expertise will help us give enterprise marketers even better insights into what drives growth and how to maximize ROI across every investment. Learn more about Uptempo + OptiMine here: https://lnkd.in/gc3GSmYe  

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Flip the funnel, ditch the playbook? AI isn’t just changing how we go to market—it’s rewriting the whole strategy. Mark Stouse shows how predictive models are replacing outdated GTM tactics and what that means for marketing ops. If you're still optimizing lead stages, you might be solving the wrong problem. Get up to speed: https://lnkd.in/eQWmttEw

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In times of economic uncertainty, agencies face mounting pressures: shrinking budgets, heightened client expectations, and the challenge of doing more with less. Our latest Basis blog post delves into how agencies can turn economic turbulence into growth by leveraging tech-driven strategies. From automating routine tasks to unifying fragmented systems, the right tools can empower teams to focus on what truly matters: delivering exceptional client experiences. It's not just about surviving the storm, it's about building resilience and positioning for long-term success. Explore the full article 👇 #AgencyLeadership #TechDrivenGrowth #ExperientialMarketing #DigitalTransformation

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"Interesting insights from the annual Martech Replacement Survey by MarTech.org. The data shows a decline in replacement rates for major martech systems, with marketers prioritizing better features and integration capabilities. This highlights the importance of good integrations as a first-class feature for martech vendors. Exciting to see the maturing of martech and marketing ops teams. #martech #marketingops #integration" https://lnkd.in/eqmSEe5Q

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Search engines stopped rewarding banks for repeating "checking account near me" years ago, yet many financial marketers still cling to keyword-density tactics. The latest piece from Lead Marketing Strategies explains why semantic SEO—grounded in entity relationships, intent mapping and strict compliance signals—is quickly becoming the difference between page-one visibility and digital obscurity for institutions competing with agile fintechs. Key takeaways I found useful: • Build a ledger-like content taxonomy. When blogs, rate calculators and FAQs sit under clear parents such as Personal Loans, Business Credit or Wealth Management, crawlers can establish topical authority and customers can self-serve faster. Better UX equals stronger engagement signals. • Cluster keywords by journey stage, not by phrase match. Awareness topics (“what is APR?”) lead naturally into consideration guides comparing rate structures, then decision pages that streamline secure applications. This mirrors the way prospects actually research a financial product and keeps the brand visible from first question to final click. • Treat compliance as a conversion asset. Plain-language disclosures, FDIC badges and schema for routing numbers or branch locations reassure both regulators and users. Trust elements lower bounce rates and are increasingly factored into ranking algorithms. • Optimize for voice and AI discovery. Searches like “Where can I open a high-yield account near me?” are conversational and local. Structured FAQs and entity markup help assistants surface your branch instead of a competitor’s. Why it matters: Google’s semantic models reward depth, clarity and credibility—qualities banks already prize in financial reporting. By aligning digital content with the same precision found in internal ledgers, marketing teams gain resilience against algorithm updates and a measurable lift in qualified leads. If omnichannel growth is on your roadmap for 2026, the article is worth a read and a share with the SEO and compliance teams. Smart clustering today will make every future campaign—PPC, social, email—more efficient because the core content architecture is already trusted. Curious how your current taxonomy stacks up? A quick audit of headings, schema and internal links often reveals immediate wins. #SemanticSEO #BankMarketing #DigitalBanking #ContentStrategy #Compliance #VoiceSearch #MarketingLeadership #LeadGeneration #Fintech #SearchMarketing https://lnkd.in/ehr8Puf7

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If you're a PE or VC operating partner who oversees a portfolio of SaaS companies, there's one metric deserves far more attention than it usually gets: how many opportunities end without a decision. In many enterprise SaaS companies, "no decision" approaches half of all deals. These outcomes rarely receive the scrutiny given to competitive losses, yet they do more to weaken pipeline quality, slow sales cycles, and depress valuation. The standard CRM explanations don’t help: • No budget • Changed priorities • Status quo • Went dark/ghosted These are labels—not causes. GTM leaders often sense deeper issues, but haven’t had a reliable way to preempt, uncover or correct them. Two recent guests on our SaaS Backwards podcast are approaching this issue in powerful and complementary ways: Brent Adamson, famous for The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer books, has done deep research on the no decision problem in enterprise sales. His new book, The Framemaking Sale, goes in depth on the top causes of no decision. Prospects lack confidence in their decision making and worry they may not be able to implement a new solution. These two concerns explain many stalled or abandoned opportunities. This insight reshapes the role of sellers in a world where prospects do not want more information from vendors. Helping prospects feel confident about their decision making is the key to trust. This means providing objective insights and resources about how to make a decision regardless of what vendor they choose. It is also important to address the concerns buyers have about successful implementation. Many economic buyers have had painful experiences with solutions that never produced the promised value. This resonates with me and validates clients and guests on the podcast who now integrate migration into their pricing and packaging to reduce customer anxiety. It also aligns with what successful SaaS vendors like HubSpot do through partner-led implementation and guided onboarding. Read the rest of this inaugural post on my SubStack "SaaS and AI Go-to-Market Notes" at this link -> https://lnkd.in/e4ZuMXnb The goal of the newsletter is to bring insights to PE and VC operating partners that they might not have, from my more than 35 years of work with hundreds of software and B2B tech companies at all stages of growth, as well as sources who bring unique value and whose writings influence our work at Austin Lawrence Group. Please let me know what you think of the new newsletter! Thanks!

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