S
S

suhdude

Sales Rep

Opinionated
Valued Contributor
Catalyst
+3

What does Marketing do in tech companies?

Title might sound dumb, but here me out...I come from the B2C 100% commission based world of life insurance sales/retirement income planning. I am solely responsible for my own prospecting/marketing which is predominantly direct response marketing (FB and youtube ads) and relationship building.


My understanding is that SDR's and AE's are responsible for their own outbound prospecting (linkedin, email, cold calling, etc.) with some inbound lead generation within some companies. Obviously there is some marketing within every major tech company, but it seems there isn't much of a focus on paid advertising/cold acquisitions. So my question is, what do heads of marketing/marketing departments do?


Again, might sound like an obvious question to many of you, but I'm outside this industry so no idea how it works.

🔎 Prospecting
☁️ Software Tech
📨 Marketing
13

25 comments

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Diablo
Politicker
7
Sr. AE
the list is endless my buddy - some are paid/organic campaign so you stay on top of your competitors on the webpage, creating contents, increasing TOF, generating traffic, managing webinars, sending out emails, creating cadences etc etc etc.
suhdude
Opinionated
0
Sales Rep
Are any positions within marketing performance based like they are in sales (i.e. if the results of your marketing efforts drive a higher volume of sales, you earn more)? Sales is very quantifiable and easy to determine whose a stud and whose not, but it seems marketing is less clearly defined the results one produces.
Diablo
Politicker
1
Sr. AE
There are many parts to it that's why tracking in % makes sense to see the trend. Hence Marketing is generally considered as a Cost Center and not Profit :)
suhdude
Opinionated
0
Sales Rep
Guess my world of 1-3 product types based entirely off direct response is different - can clearly identify the ROI off different marketing efforts. Can see how this would be much more difficult to quantify with longer sales cycles, different deal size depending on company, etc. etc.
Space_Ghost20
Valued Contributor
5
Account Executive
Well, at my tech company, AEs do not prospect. We instead spend most of our time trying to convert free trialers into paying customers. Those free trialers largely discovered us through things marketing did.

On the one hand, it's nice to have 7-10 "warm" leads a day. On the other hand, most of them are duds.

Just as a general observation from other places I've worked, marketing folks I've worked with were either absolutely amazing at what they did, or absolutely terrible. I never met a marketing person who was just adequate.
SaaSsy
Politicker
0
AE
No prospecting?! Damn where do you work…
Space_Ghost20
Valued Contributor
2
Account Executive
Nowhere you'd want to. I've been trying to leave this place for 7 months now. It's a Canadian fintech company.
CuriousFox
WR Officer
2
🦊
No kidding we would like to know 👀🍿
SaaSsy
Politicker
1
AE
Ugh ok you convinced me with that 🤣
DataCorrupter
Politicker
0
Account Executive
What a great way to finish that post, either amazing or terrible, but none who are adequate!

Kudos for this bit.
Kosta_Konfucius
Politicker
4
Sales Rep
Marketing is all about creating awareness about the products. They develop strategies to generate leads for the sales team and attract potential customers to the business for inbounds
This is usually done via advertising, content creation, social media campaigns, SEO, etc
suhdude
Opinionated
1
Sales Rep
Obviously both sales and marketing are extremely important and are both performance based positions, but it seems sales is paid significantly higher based on my research. In my world, the harder thing is marketing/lead gen so if you 'crack the code' you earn disproportionately more. Why the discrepancy in income across these 2 positions (assuming my research is accurate) given that they more or less serve the same overarching function (i.e. increased revenue growth)? Would seem there should be some sort of comp structure within marketing that's similar to SDR's/AE's base+commission (i.e. if your marketing campaigns drive more revenue, you earn more).
Kosta_Konfucius
Politicker
1
Sales Rep
Marketing would never have a Comp plan like sales, my guess is it’s because it’s not a clear how much in sales x idea added value.
SaaSsy
Politicker
4
AE
Nothing
pirate
Big Shot
4
🦜☠️ Account Executive
Loled at this question. Because whatever they do is not helpful usually.
Justatitle
Big Shot
4
Account Executive
Tell you about how many MGLs they got from the last webinar and the email is [email protected]
CuriousFox
WR Officer
2
🦊
Dot org
Justatitle
Big Shot
1
Account Executive
Huge
DataCorrupter
Politicker
1
Account Executive
Wish I could double-up-vote this.
Justatitle
Big Shot
0
Account Executive
tell a friend
oldcloser
Arsonist
3
💀
I appreciate the query. Not everyone lives in the grind of Cost Per Click, Cost Per Conversion, Cost Per Lead, ROAS, Page Rank, Quality Score, Historical Quality Score, Pay Per View, etc. But I promise you, marketing is highly quantifiable.

The 30 character limit in a Google search ad shut the lights in big creative shops that didn’t learn to leverage data. It’s all about efficiencies. The era of the biggest idea is dead.
SoccerandSales
Big Shot
2
Account Executive
Their main role is brand awareness. The more popular the brand, the more likely an inbound appears. There are lots of data to track these things like in @oldcloser ‘s post, but biggest goal is making sure your company is top of mind when a potential customer has a problem you can fix
jefe
Arsonist
2
🍁
Buy swag that goes into a closet.
BrianTracysLoveChild
Fire Starter
2
Account Manager
Nobody really knows.
CPTAmerica
Opinionated
1
President/CRO
Haha, this one is sure to generate some humor

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