Dave Gerhardt

Hey I'm Dave Gerhardt. I created Exit Five, which has turned into the top community for B2B marketing professionals. Before starting Exit Five I had a 10 year career in marketing and grew from PR intern to CMO. I even once had hair! My wife says I'm more handsome now though, and she's quite pretty so that means a lot -- but the internet just boxes me in as the typical bald guy tech bro. So oh look, another bald tech guy writing on LinkedIn! whoopty freaking do.

Anyway. Where was I... OH. Receipts! I wanted to talk about receipts, because in a world of fluff and online influencers, I actually have some receipts and I want to tell you about them here because it signals power, credibility, and makes it seem like I'm super rich, so: I used to be pretty good at marketing, and my work as a marketer played a key role (at least I think so) in helping two software companies to successful exits: Drift for $1B+ and Privy for $100M+. I certainly helped the founders make a bunch of money, and I was able to comfortably purchase a brand new Toyota Sienna minivan for my family in 2021.

Today I spend my time working on Exit Five, and it's actually been super fun and given me a bunch of purpose. We're a team of six full-time team members now, and we have a private online community and host in-person events around the world. Plus there's a popular podcast and newsletter for marketers. We reach something like 20 MILLION marketers with our content every year, and we've got a pretty special thing going on. I hope to keep it going. You can learn more about it all at exitfive.com.

I spent most of my life in the Boston area but now live in the woods in Vermont with my wife, two kids, two cats, and one dog.

You can reach me at dave@exitfive.com if you want, but TBD if I reply. Depends on the message. But please don't send me any more swag or books. But if for whatever reason you do want to send me something, I play the ProV1x golf ball and like the low numbers.

PS. Find my podcast “The Dave Gerhardt Show” on Spotify

Founder & CEO

Exit Five is a media company focused on B2B marketing. We help B2B marketers build successful careers through our content and community. Learn more at exitfive.com

The CEO should put the Product team and Marketing team together. 

In lock step. 

To drive momentum and success for the company. 

I see so much about Sales and Marketing. 

Not enough about Product and Marketing. 

There should be a vision. And a roadmap. And regular launches. Some small. Some big. And this becomes the operating system for the company. 

You can CREATE momentum for your company by doing this. Deadlines drive actions. 

These regular launches give Marketing and Sales regular opportunities to talk to new customers. 

The CEO should be in the middle of this.

PS. If this topic lands with you and you're a CMO: we've been running a super secret group for CMOs / VP Marketing doing $25M+ ARR at Exit Five over the last few months and we're now accepting new members. Community is more important now than ever and it's all about who is in the room. We have curated the right room for you. If you want a peer group like this you can apply for a spot here: tinyurl.com/23h2c5eh

Founder: Exit Five. Community Builder. Former CMO. Building the top community for B2B marketers right now at exitfive.com

I didn't want my team to publish this talk. It was too good. Should have only been for the memory of the people that went to Drive this year.

But I'm also a marketer and understand the power of social media and free content, so fine. 

We published my pal Harry Dry's talk from Drive 2025 yesterday, and if you missed it he gave a masterclass in storytelling.

The long lost art of conflict and emotion in the world of AI, PLEASE GO LISTEN TO THIS MAN.

The first line of this clip says it all "You should know so much about your category you could write a book on it."

You're not creating a category to fit into Gartner or G2. You are creating a category because you are literally inventing a new of way of doing things!

That's the opportunity.

I'll put the recording in the comments (audio only)

Founder: Exit Five. The top community for B2B marketers.

John Short

Compound Growth Marketing

Listen to our podcast: https://www.compoundgrowthmarketing.com/podcast
Subscribe to our newsletter: https://www.compoundgrowthmarketing.com/compoundedweeklysignup

Revenue marketing for scaling technology companies.

Underscore VC

The Underscore Core is a curated group of exceptional entrepreneurs, executives, and experts who work in partnership with Underscore VC, an earliest stage venture capital firm, to identify transformative entrepreneurs and support them as they build iconic companies. Core Members have collectively built hundreds of companies, created thousands of jobs, served millions of customers and created billions of dollars in value for their stakeholders.

Core Member

Endeavor Greece

I spend three plus hours a month talking with companies from Greece and Cyprus helping them to figure out demand generation strategies, go to market, and US expansion.

Mentor

Demand Sage

My teams have spent a lot of time on pulling reports and then analyzing them so when I had the chance to work with DemandSage, a product that automates the reporting, and pulls data out of Hubspot into Google Sheets and provides access to reports that I have had trouble pulling in Hubspot natively, I was excited.

Advisor

Workable

Workable is a hiring platform that improves the way high growth companies hire. We help you post the job out to the top job boards, and most importantly organize the hiring and interview process. We've raised $34M in venture funding today and are going fast by all SaaS benchmarks. To try it out, go to www.workable.com (there is a 15 day free trial) and let me know what you think.

VP Demand Generation

Worked on software and ecommerce properties. Clients include: Greycork, LogoMix, Morgan Stanley

Consultant

Yesware, Inc.

• Built Company Dashboard
• Identified channels for customer acquisition leading to explosive growth
• Developed lifecycle marketing touch points in product and with email campaigns

Marketer

LogMeIn

• Developed marketing campaigns for join.me, BoldChat and Rescue
• Worked with paid search, display, retargeting, online video, mobile, and TV

Search Marketing Manager

• Built marketing dashboard for entire company
• Developed customer economics model evaluating P/L

Senior Business Analyst

SEMPO Boston

Board Member Social Co-Chair

Monster

SEO Specialist

CEO at Compound Growth Marketing

As the CEO of Compound Growth Marketing, I help B2B technology companies drive predictable revenue through effective demand generation, go-to-market, and US expansion strategies. I have over 13 years of experience in online marketing, new media, and Google analytics, working with various SaaS, B2B, and B2C companies. 

My mission is to share my insights and best practices with other entrepreneurs, executives, and experts who want to grow their businesses and scale their impact. That's why I host the Compound Growth Marketing Show, a podcast that tackles the challenges and opportunities of revenue marketing in the tech industry. I'm also a core member at Underscore VC, a mentor at Endeavor Greece, and an advisor at Demand Sage, where I support and partner with transformative and innovative founders and teams.

CEOs often look at marketing as a cost center, and this disconnect is why so many CMO tenures end prematurely. The gap between how marketing thinks about itself and how the rest of the organization sees it starts at the top.

I've seen the fallout firsthand in my own career. 

Over the years, I've noticed CEOs typically see marketing through one of three lenses:
👍 Growth Engine: They want marketing to deliver measurable outcomes tied directly to revenue and pipeline.
👍 Brand Strategy: They focus on market positioning, narrative, and long-term perception.
👍 Sales Enablement: They see marketing as fuel for sales, prioritizing tools, insights, and content that move deals forward.

Problems arise when a CMO pitches ROI forecasts to a CEO craving brand transformation, or when creative storytelling meets a numbers-obsessed executive.

The fix starts with going beyond surface-level goals. In your planning sessions, ask questions that will help you build the plan. The goal is to get a baseline of what your CEO is looking for. Get something you can point back to when the CEO changes their mind.

Once you uncover your CEO's primary lens, tailor your plan accordingly:
👍 If it's Growth Engine: Lead with pipeline projections, attribution models, and clear revenue impact.
👍 If it's Brand Strategy: Highlight market positioning, share of voice, and long-term value creation.
👍 If it's Sales Enablement: Show how marketing will accelerate the sales cycle and equip reps with what they need to win.

How to put this into practice during annual planning:

Do the pre-work before planning meetings. Review the last 12 months of CEO communications including all-hands meetings, board decks, and investor calls. Identify recurring themes. Talk to your CFO and head of sales to understand what the CEO is currently obsessing over.

Build your reporting around their lens. If your CEO is Growth Engine focused but you're sending brand awareness reports, you're training them to ignore your updates. 

Write monthly or weekly updates to the CEO so they can see the research behind your decision-making. Keep the email short, so they read, but long enough to show your thought process. This will build trust. 

Look at their history of where they’ve been. What was their background before becoming CEO? Could you meet with people in marketing who previously reported to them to get their perspective? 

CEO’s are often impacted by outside changes like competition, articles, investor/board questions, or random ideas that pop into their head. Figuring out ways to constantly get in front of the CEO, and share your perspectives even if they're on the road a lot, will help you build trust and get autonomy. 

If you report to the CMO and not the CEO, or someone else in your org, the advice still works. Get to the bottom line of what drives them.

Brand advertising can be measured and should be measured. 

We recently ran tests to track the full-funnel impact of CTV brand campaigns for one of our clients. I was surprised at impact on cost to acquire customers, and down funnel engagement when users were shown video upfunnel.

When we layered brand awareness on top of our demand generation program here is what happened:

The CTV campaign reached 91,000 people with 31% audience penetration. Among LinkedIn members who saw the CTV ads, we observed:
👍 14% higher click-through rates on subsequent ads
🔥 639% higher lead form completion rates

This was the compounding effect of repeated exposure across the funnel.

We also tested consideration campaigns against cold audiences. Members who saw consideration messaging before conversion offers showed:
👍 119% lift in CTR
🔥 42% lift in form completion rates

The gap between "warm" and "cold" audiences is substantial. And measurable.
B2B companies skip brand work because the ROI feels unclear. But when you can test the impact of up-funnel engagement, you can prove the value.

If your cost per lead keeps climbing on bottom-funnel tactics alone, the problem might not be your targeting or creative. It might be that no one knows who you are yet.

The math works when you build the full funnel. We have the data to prove it.

We tested CTV and saw a 6X conversion on downfunnel conversion. 

I'm sure it wasn't the only benefit, we likely saw a lift in branded search, direct and email response from outbound. 

In B2B, when we get on the day one list, we see better efficiencies down funnel. 

But we (B2B marketers) are hesitant to run brand media because its not measureable (most of the time). 

We ran CTV to 91K people across our ICP. The study showed accounts exposed to those ads converted at 639% higher rates than unexposed accounts when they later hit our lead forms. We also saw a 14% lift in click-through rates.

We didn't track branded search lift. Or direct traffic. Or email response rates from the same account lists. But after running programs like this before, I am sure:
- Branded search volume from those accounts is increasing
- Direct traffic from their domains is likely up
- SDRs' emails to those accounts are probably getting opened more
- Sales conversations with warmed accounts should feel different

Why? Because I saw a similar impact when I've run Meta ads for a proptech vendor, or when I ran TV ads when I was at LogMeIn.

None of this would show up in the CTV attribution. No clean conversion path. No last-click pixel. But the behavioral change is real. But it can be (not always) tough to prove. 

We know intuitively when we create momentum. When it feels like our brand is everywhere... that the result will be better conversations with sales. 

92% of buyers end up buying from companies that were on their day one list. Its very difficult to reverse this momentum. 

Reach out if you're planning 2026, and trying to figure out how to measure upfunnel brand impact.

In sales, I've seen first hand the advantage of being the first solution considered. It changes the dynamic of the sales conversation.

When you're part of the initial consideration set before evaluation even begins, you're not fighting for attention. You're already in the conversation.

But here's what makes that position even more valuable:
You set the expectations. You share what you see as most important.

When buyers encounter your brand early in their journey, you define what good looks like in your category. Your product becomes the baseline. Every competitor gets measured against the standard you established.

This isn't theory. We see it in the numbers.

Through upper funnel investment we've seen up to a 200% improvement in cost per acquisition. 

This is why brand investment matters. Not just for awareness. For economics.
When you win early, everything down-funnel gets easier.

Most B2B software companies wait until buyers are actively evaluating solutions to start advertising. By then, they're competing in a category someone else defined, on terms someone else set.

Move up-funnel. Be on the first day list. Set the tone for what software in your category should deliver.

Lower CAC, get more efficient sales cycles, and be a part of deals you wouldn't have seen. 

That's where the real competitive advantage lives.

Advertising has a bigger impact than we measure.

That's been my experience at least. 

We have data that shows it, and methods to run tests to better understand impact. 

I learned media's impact is often bigger than what's measured the hard way when I was working in-house. We ran an analysis showing certain media wasn't delivering ROI based on direct attribution. So we pulled back spend. The numbers looked right.

Three months later, we saw the real impact. I was at the end of a vacation in Barcelona, sitting on the hotel bed with my laptop open, checking the dashboard before we headed to dinner.

What I saw:
📉 Direct and branded search had dropped
📈 Cost to acquire from demand capture channels had increased
💵 We had optimized for immediate returns and missed the broader picture

It's not just this one time:
↗️ The paid media team at CGM ran tests to show impact of CTV (see my other post from this week)
↗️ Early on at CGM we ran a test with whats now Meta and grew trials 3X YoY largely through Meta (we didn't do an official lift study, but through my analysis I saw the impact). 
↘️ Countless other times, we've cut paid social and paid search prices go up

Being on your prospect's day one list gives you a distinct advantage. When they enter buying mode, you're already a known entity. They're more likely to convert with you than a competitor they're discovering for the first time.

AEO has amplified this dynamic. Prospects are arriving at your site far more educated than before. They've already run multiple queries through LLMs, processed information, and formed opinions. If you weren't part of that earlier research phase, you're playing catch up.

We all know the upper funnel spend is the one most likely to get cut when the budget drops, but we also see a dip in performance down funnel when that cut happens. 

Document it. When you are spending upper-funnel, run tests, don't look for perfect, but look for indicators of value that will help you build the case with your C-level execs.

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