This is why we love Darin Medeiros: He gets right to the point. We were just three-and-a-half minutes into Episode #7 of the Marketing Gets Real podcast when he came clean. “My first two startups after LinkedIn, I did it wrong,” he says. “But the best thing about doing it wrong is that you learn how to do it right!”
By learning from his mistakes, Darin’s created the perfect recipe for Sales and Marketing collaboration. He’s baked it from scratch at six startups over the past 10 years, most recently with the online learning platform Go1, where he’s Head of Sales for the Americas.
Darin is humble, honest, and forever restless. Which is why our hosts Cari Baldwin and Dana Harder couldn’t wait to sit down with him, listen to him dish out a full plate of hints and tips, and hear all about those oh-so-wrong moments that Darin made oh-so-right. What followed was 40 minutes of mind-blowing insights.
“Marketing is far more scientific than I ever thought.”
Darin freely admits that, early in his career, he fanned the flames of the notorious Sales vs. Marketing tussle. “Ten years ago, my favorite joke was if you can’t sell, market,” he says. Then he started building Sales teams from scratch and learned that Marketing is the secret sauce behind Sales success and startup growth.
“I have such a deeper appreciation for our Marketing people than I ever had because it’s so hard,” he says. “It’s not about digital advertising or blogs or podcasts. It’s about connecting them all together and building the momentum that drives the sales team.”
“To spend $10,000 on LinkedIn when nobody knows who you are is a total waste of money.”
When Darin joined Go1, the company faced an identity crisis. “Our internal joke was that our entire sales team made 75,000 calls and only one person said, “Oh, I know what Go1 is,”” he says. After some bumps in the road, they partnered with an agency (shameless plug alert: it’s Unreal Digital Group), discovered what their customers really wanted, pivoted based on that knowledge, and built campaigns to help drive awareness and leads.
The experience gave Darin a fresh outlook on the power of content marketing and how it can shape effective go-to-market strategies. “My philosophy now is much more centric around… create awareness first, and then create campaigns behind that awareness, and then you can get your leads,” he says. How much time will it take to do all of that? We’ll let Darin answer that question for himself:
“By the end of that conference we had relationships. It wasn’t just a business card.”
Darin also leveraged the power of in-person event marketing to build awareness for Go1. Along the way, he learned that the most successful events are actually a series of events—from the cocktail party to sponsored speakers to simple messaging to a more intimate booth. “The fact we layered in all those different engagement events that were not all that much more expensive—maybe $5,000 or $10,000… you have to do all those things if you want to capture the most amount of opportunities.”
His advice for helping Marketing and Sales create in-person event magic together: Have Marketing plan every aspect of the event, then ask Sales Development Reps to staff the booth. “Marketing can run the workflow… SDRs would set up the booth… and two days after the event our SDRs are on the phones with no delay because the first person who touches those leads wins,” he says.
What else does Darin dish about? Listen to all of Episode #7 and you’ll learn how he used content marketing to navigate Go1 through the Great Resignation, why he says it’s sometimes better to stick it out in tough times than jump companies, and the money-saving marriage advice he shares with his kids. Listen now, and subscribe today to get more tasty treats from the top chefs in the Marketing and Sales kitchens.