Episode 4: The Traits of a Winning Marketer with Chris Willis, CMO & CPO of Acrolinx

Steve sits down with Christopher Willis, Chief Marketing & Pipeline Officer at Acrolinx, the only AI platform that uses a unique linguistic analytics engine to “read” all your content and provide immediate guidance to improve it.

He began his career as a web developer, but before long became smitten with business and marketing within the tech space. Chris, who graduated with a degree in theatre, says that he enjoys marketing because it affords “the ability to be creative, but in a measurable way”. This is why he fell in love with the data-driven B2B world while appreciating the art and craft of building a brand.

Chris’s initial successes as a company leader taught him that “launching a business around an ideal customer profile (ICP) with a persona and a business case makes all the difference at the beginning stages of a new company.

He says that marketers should see advertising as a lubricant for their funnels, because it attracts new leads and facilitates the journey to that first meeting and beyond. But, if a marketer relies solely on waiting for that one-to-one that content syndication aims to acquire, they are much less likely to experience success.

Finally, Chris speaks on the qualities that make the best marketers, from a willingness to take risks—and the patience to wait for the potential long-term rewards of those risks—as well as the value of curiosity and proactivity when it comes to solving problems.

What you'll learn from this episode:

• As a marketer, you can build trust very quickly if you can begin your message highlighting your ideal customer’s pain points. If your prospect can “recognize themselves in the product”, it will sell itself.
• The teams which do the best are the ones who are willing to take risks. This also requires each member of the team to embrace delayed gratification, and that means being willing to invest time, effort, and/or money into an initiative with little-to-no immediate ROI for potentially worthwhile returns down the line.
• When it comes to marketing tech, Chris prizes real-time engagement metrics over everything else. The ability to show salespeople engagement growth from zero, in real-time, is vital to building the relationship between sales and marketing.
• When presented with any problem, even if it happens to be beyond the scope of your role as a marketer, always try to figure it out. One of the most important traits of a good marketer is curiosity—the fuel for creativity and initiative.

Connect with Christopher Willis on LinkedIn.