Moments of impact from Nick Bennett's career
I started posting on LinkedIn in 2020 because of a work contest. I reported to Kyle Coleman at Clari, and he created a spiff for all his direct reports to post on LinkedIn. I love contests and I'm a very competitive person. I asked what I should talk about and Kyle immediately said, "Field marketing. Nobody talks about it. People just think you're a logistics planner." So I did. I wrote about the misconceptions and how to go from Field Marketing 1.0 to Field Marketing 2.0, which means being a true partner to the revenue organization. At first, no one liked my stuff. No one commented, but I wasn't a big writer, so for me it was a creative outlet and a place to try things. It was back when LinkedIn was fun and people were really writing. Over time the DMs started. People would tell me that they read the content but couldn't engage with it for a variety of reasons. They said my posts made them feel heard and seen. That's when it clicked that this was meaningful. If I could help one person a day, fantastic. So I kept showing up. During COVID, I hosted monthly virtual field marketing meetups, and about 100 people joined every time to talk shop. I also hosted The Anonymous Marketer, a podcast sponsored by Google where marketers sent in questions anonymously and I broke them down. Communities had filled up with their peers, and people needed somewhere else to turn. While I was at Alyce, I created a post sharing the playbook we used to collect G2 reviews. The post blew up and got close to a million views. Along with it came DMs calling it bribery, plus threats, including from competitors of G2. It was a huge lesson in what you will receive when you go viral. Anytime you hit publish with your name on something, someone is going to judge you, and you have to be okay with that. I even made a merch line called Haters Hate, Creators Create. Outside of the trolling DMs, I knew these posts were still helping people be more effective at work, and that is what matters. After 6 years, my content has taken me from field marketer to known voice with 58k+ followers (and growing). I've widened what I do as a marketer by miles, but my core field marketer follower group is still strong. Now, I don't need a resume or even a website because of that. I've built my own community and distribution channel. I'm proud that I've done all that while staying true to myself and bringing my whole self to posting.
NB Marketing · FounderAlmost four years ago, a publisher reached out to me with a proposal to write a book. They'd been following my content on LinkedIn and were bullish that I was the right person to be an author. I was initially hesitant, but after some conversations with them I thought, what's the worst that can happen? I don't think of myself as a long-form writer, I'm more of an operator. But in being an operator, I’m always in tune with trends among marketers. Around this time the new buzzy thing was influencer marketing, but most B2B marketers would hear "influencer" and roll their eyes. They thought it was a B2C thing with dancing, ring lights, and discount codes. But I knew that opinion was a missed opportunity. Influencer is a blanket term, and for some of these folks it doesn’t fully represent them. Many are practitioners and subject matter experts who have distribution. Adding to this confusion was the fact that there was no real playbook for working with “influencers” on the b2b side. I was having countless conversations with exec teams and marketing leads on how to effectively leverage influencer partnerships, and where this fit into growth. Was it its own channel or did it fit better inside events and ABM? And then, I had my topic. Writing took me two years. With kids, that isn't easy, so I was finding time in chunks here and there. The process was way bigger than I expected. Quotes, permissions, sign-offs from everyone you interviewed, all of it in a specific order. The consistency and patience it took to do this with young children is the part I'm proudest of. I also made sure to write it the way I'd want to read it. The book isn't meant to go from start to finish linearly. It's constructed so that you are able to jump around, highlight, and figure out which framework pairs with which, and how it fits into your organization. I packed the book with real tactical examples from actual programs I'd run, and from the advice and stories of various CMOs and VPs. Ultimately, the book was published and hit #1 bestseller on Amazon in 2024. The feedback I hear most often from readers is that they love the framework and the ability to jump around in the book to whichever chapters are relevant at the time. I love that I built something so useful. Scott Leese, who's written several books, told me early on: don't write a book thinking you're going to get rich. You're not J.K. Rowling. You write it for leverage. He was right. The real return has been the lift in advising, consulting, and speaking after the book was published. Executives trying to figure this out didn't have a brand-side playbook, and now there was one. It also led to my partnership with ZoomInfo and building their original influencer marketing program. Key metrics - Number 1 Amazon bestseller - Led to advising work, including a $200K influencer program build for ZoomInfo
Reachdesk · Events & ABMGoing to start with the honest statement: I'm not a huge fan of trade show booths. I understand the value of a booth, trust me, I've done thousands of them. My issue is when you have reps who just sit there. Walk any show floor and you'll see people sitting down, on their phone, on their computer. If someone walks up, it's "hey, scan it, here's a pen." Then compare that to what some of these shows cost. I recently spoke with someone who had a booth at Black Hat for $300,000. I asked what they got from it. A couple hundred scans, and about a month after the show, nothing had turned into an opportunity. "It was a brand awareness thing." And "our competitors were there, so we have to be there." I generally say this to folks: if your competitor buys a billboard, do you have to buy a billboard too? You can't compete dollar for dollar with every competitor because they showed up. So when I work on a show, the booth is just a home base and the real plan surrounds it. Recently at Unbound, I ran a hugely successful sponsor playbook with Reachdesk. Here’s the run down on what we did. Pre-book the meetings We went into Unbound with 35 meetings pre-booked before anyone ever got to the show floor. This is the part people tend to skip, and it's the part that makes the biggest difference on post show pipeline. People always say, "but what if we don't get the attendee list?" They shouldn’t be deterred though, it really doesn't take too much to figure it out. There's an event app. There's a camera. We have Claude. You can pull that information out, enrich it, and push it into Salesforce or HubSpot. When I tell people this, the reaction is usually, "oh, I didn't think about that." It's right in front of you, so people overlook it. Getting the list is the easy part, though. You still need a real reason to reach out and genuinely good copy. Otherwise you're just another email. Give people something worth walking over for Conference show floors are crowded. If you show up looking bland or the same as everyone else you can’t expect much interest. You need to really think hard about what is interesting and memorable. Give the attendees something that is worth stopping and chatting over. Our activation this year was custom denim jackets, built around the idea of going from URL to IRL. Everything we see is digital, so how do you bring people together in real life? We created custom patches that folks could iron on. It was memorable, customizable and created a moment where they could pause and interact with our team. Those little things are so important in creating an experience, and feel worlds away from just getting a pen. Treat the booth as home base & lean in to auxiliary events The booth was simply where people knew to find us. Easy to find, a place to sit down and chat for a bit. The real work happened in the meetings, the breakfast, the lounge, and the follow-up. We ran a breakfast and a lounge with massages, build-your-own flower bouquets, necklace building, and water bottles. All these auxiliary moments created a halo effect around the brand. People were able to interact with us multiple times and further those connections. At the end of the conference we had held meetings with anyone we prebooked and had set many, many more. We met with high value prospects multiple times between breakfasts, massages, at the booth, etc. When the booth is being broken down most teams are counting the number of scans. Our team already had qualified pipeline. That is the difference between fantastic ROI and just getting a list of emails. Key metrics - 35 meetings pre-booked before the show floor opened - 60 meetings by the end of day 3 - 30% meeting to qualified opp conversion 2 weeks post show
