HOW TO TRANSFORM MARKETING FROM A FLUFFY IMAGE TO A REVENUE GENERATING MACHINE
Are you tired of marketing being seen as an afterthought in your organisation, focused solely on tactical execution?
It's time to elevate your marketing function and position it as a strategic driver of revenue growth, tightly aligned with your sales goals. In this episode of the Spotlight on B2B Tech Marketing podcast, we'll explore how to transform your marketing approach from a reactive, campaign-based mindset to a proactive, strategic revenue engine.
I was delighted to welcome Briana McCrory, the powerhouse Chief Marketing Officer at BigHand, a leading global legal technology company providing innovative workflow and practice management software solutions.
Over the past decade, Briana has been instrumental in evolving BigHand's marketing function from a supportive role into a strategic revenue generator.
Tune in as together we pull back the curtain on how she elevated marketing's impact through meticulous data analysis, fostering a growth mindset within her team, and cultivating a unified "one team" culture across marketing, sales, and customer success.
EPISODE OUTLINE AND HIGHLIGHTS
[00:34] Evolution of BigHand
[03:09] Marketing's Shift from Tactics to Strategy
[06:40] Breaking Down Silos
[09:09] Proving Marketing's Value
[12:22] An Agile Approach to Metrics
[15:56] One Team Mindset
[18:53] Multi-Product Transition via Acquisitions - Educating the Tech Market
[22:33] Advice for Transforming your Tech Marketing Team
CHARTING A MARKETING TRANSFORMATION
When Briana joined BigHand a decade ago, marketing was seen as an afterthought; an experience common to many marketing leaders in scaling tech businesses. She started her journey in a siloed marketing function with a fluffy image and described a key part of elevating marketing's influence was communicating its value and impact in a data-driven, quantifiable way that resonated with executives and budget holders.
It was a significant shift from simply talking about marketing activities and tactics to focusing on measurable results tied to revenue goals, as Bri describes, "stakeholders don't really care if you're going to an event, they care about what's the outcome from that event? And what are we aiming to achieve, and starting to talk more in numbers and data versus the activity."
Briana credited this mindset shift, along with demonstrating marketing's ROI and attributing funnel movement to specific campaigns, as critical for securing increased budget and investment in her team over the years.
They proved marketing's value by tracking marketing's revenue and profit numbers as the overarching metric aligned with sales, focusing on sales accepted/qualified leads as the key performance indicator, using campaign attribution data to show marketing's impact on pipeline and comparing actual ROI to broader tech benchmarks.
By taking a data-driven approach to measuring performance, tying activities to business results, and making a quantifiable case for marketing's return on investment, Briana's team transformed perception from being seen as an afterthought into a revenue generator.
BUILDING A GROWTH MINDSET
During our discussion, Bri focuses the spotlight on a growth mindset for the marketing team; modelling this from the top down. This speaks to fostering an environment where the marketing team feels empowered to experiment, test new ideas, learn from failures, and continuously evolve based on data - rather than being paralysed by fear of making mistakes or anchored to stale tactics.
Bri found that adopting an agile, growth-oriented mindset allowed BigHand's marketing team to transform from tacticians to strategic leaders. By giving her team permission to take calculated risks and valuing the lessons from things that didn't work, she unlocked their potential for innovation.
As she says in the episode, "No one ever died because of bad marketing in LegalTech! So don't be afraid to try new things and celebrate the lessons learned as much as you celebrate the successes."
Role modeling this growth mindset and creating the psychological safety for marketers to explore, learn rapidly, and adapt is crucial for building a high-performing team capable of driving sustained business impact. Her advice challenges CMOs to embolden their teams to embrace change rather than opt for the safe, familiar path.
As Bri says, "If I had embraced that mindset earlier, we probably would have tried new things, new approaches, listened to the data a bit more versus just doing what we've always done."
TODAY’S GUEST
Briana McCrory is the dynamic Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at BigHand, a leading provider of productivity software for busy legal professionals. With over two decades of marketing expertise, Briana has demonstrated her ability to drive strategic growth and innovation in the technology sector. Armed with a degree in Marketing and a passion for storytelling, she has navigated various leadership roles, honing her skills in brand development, digital marketing, and customer engagement along the way.
At BigHand, Briana leads a global team of marketing professionals, orchestrating impactful campaigns and initiatives that elevate the company's market presence and drive customer acquisition. Her leadership and relentless pursuit of excellence have positioned BigHand as a market leader, setting new standards for innovation and customer-centricity in the legal tech industry.
Briana's passion for innovation, coupled with her commitment to fostering inclusive workplaces, continues to solidify her reputation as a marketing leader in the industry.
You can connect with Bri on LinkedIn or discover more about BigHand at bighand.com
OUR HOST
Karen Lloyd is a passionate marketing headhunter and recruitment expert specialising in marketing and C-suite in the technology sector. With over 25 years of experience in the recruitment industry, Karen brings a unique depth of expertise that sets her apart from most recruiters.
Over her career, Karen has accumulated a wealth of experience that includes serving as a Board Director and being actively involved in growing a business for 13 years. Karen has been a part of five start-ups, giving her first-hand knowledge of the critical importance of hiring the right people.
Currently, Karen is the founder and Director of Armstrong Lloyd. She leads a very special team that partners with businesses and empowers them to build industry-leading marketing teams for some of the most exciting B2B technology brands - from small agile and disruptive start-ups to global giants providing a wealth of product and service offerings.
