Derek E. Weeks is CMO at Katalon, a leader in AI-augmented software testing. Like myself, he is an author who has written several books; his latest is “Unfair Mindshare: A CMO’s Guide to Community-Led Marketing in a Product-Led World.”
In the book’s forward, Derek writes: “In my experience, one of the best ways to generate lasting impact in marketing is to embrace the communities being served. Deep empathy with members of those communities, along with the knowledge, inspiration, and connections they seek, led my teams and me to combine traditional demand-generation and community-led approaches in a way that became the envy of our peers…. More importantly, our work felt more meaningful. It was a blast coming to work each day. Our marketing teams were respected not only by our colleagues, but by our communities at large.”
Derek and I share experiences and insights, emphasizing the need to create helpful communities that tie to revenue-generating activities, prioritize relationships and trust, and demonstrate measurable business outcomes. We also discuss the balance between personal brand and business interests in community-led marketing efforts, along with the importance of balancing technology and human relationships in marketing.
Topics covered in our talk include:
- How community engagement can increase reach and credibility for one’s other marketing efforts.
- The advantages of building relationships with people who are not currently in-market for one’s products.
- The pros and cons of building “open” vs. “closed” online communities.
- How properly designed communities can provide participants with the required autonomy to pursue and realize their own ideas for discussion topics.
- Strategies for justifying community investment to CFOs/CEOs and board members.
- Why gathering people together to pitch products often results in suboptimal results (vs. gathering them to hear industry experts).
- Why resource-scarce organizations have a much better chance of succeeding by contributing to existing communities than by attempting to start one from scratch.
