Marketing With Purpose Kit: Turning Marketing into a Revenue Engine

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Mike Liwski** (0:16)
Welcome everybody to the Marketing With Purpose series of The Bliss Business Podcast, where we explore what it really takes for marketing leaders to create impact that goes really beyond just the numbers. I'm Mike Liwski, and in each of these episodes, we sit down with marketing experts to explore their leadership approach, their strategies that are really driving performance, but most importantly, really are resonating with audiences. And together, we'll dive into what's working, what's not, and the topics that we really love to talk about, you know, how purpose and empathy transform the ways that brands today are really connecting with people. So let's jump in. Today, I'm joined by Jennifer Sullivan. She is the Fractional Chief Growth Officer at Hollywood Dialect Coach. Jennifer brings with her two decades of experience driving profitable growth and transformation across a number of verticals, finance, SaaS, entertainment, media, and technology.
Known for her really rare combination of financial rigor, creative vision, and alignment with the executive leadership, she's really been able to prove in terms of being able to record of turning strategy into measurable results, which is a very unique combination in our business world today. At Top 100 Advisory and Consulting Firm, Jennifer as well led initiatives that delivered 47 percent revenue growth and earn multiple national awards for best rebrand, client experience, and as well advertising campaign of the year, which we know is one of the hardest awards to win. So congratulations on that, Jennifer. Now, at Hollywood Dialect Coach, she continues to apply her expertise in leveraging marketing and AI to uncover untapped opportunities and really help accelerate growth. Today, we're going to explore turning marketing into a revenue engine, which we know is a topic on many of our audiences' minds. So I'm super excited to dive in with you, Jennifer. Welcome to our show.

**Jennifer Sullivan** (2:38)
Thanks. Thanks for having me.

**Mike Liwski** (2:40)
Absolutely. Jennifer, before we dive in to all things marketing, really wanted to hear why was turning marketing into a revenue engine, the top topic basically that you wanted to explore with us today.

**Jennifer Sullivan** (2:59)
Sure. Well, as you mentioned before, I started in finance as an analyst, and that really gave me an instinct for what metrics really matter. Thinking about the financial health of an organization, and then how data tells a story, and it was that how that data tells a story really provided that foundation for me to decode, I would say, the complexity within a business. But that storytelling was really what drove me to go into marketing.
And in my roles, I like to think of marketing not just as something that's solving a problem, but I like to put myself in the shoes of a business owner, and really understand what levers do I need to pull to ensure growth. And I think a lot of times, marketing can sometimes be a dirty word. It's a cost center, and you have to really rewrite that narrative to understand and help business owners understand why it's so essential, and having that past experience, I'm able to speak their language a little more and help them understand that.

**Mike Liwski** (4:11)
Yeah, for sure. You know, and having, like as you mentioned, having that data, having those KPIs early on as our goal. And thankfully, now we have so much data that we're able to actually prove out, as you said, the work that we're doing. One of the challenges that many CMOs face, right, is they get pulled between, hey, I need kind of near-term, short-term campaign results, and then building a brand long-term. So how is it that you've been able to ensure that marketing strategy really stays aligned with the company's growth goals? And I guess wherever you found some of the biggest friction points in trying to make that long-term happen while still meeting those short-term needs.

**Jennifer Sullivan** (4:57)
Sure. And to just take a little bit of a step back, I think that as we know, there's many marketing budgets that are shrinking, but the expectations keep soaring, right? And so I think whether you're a CMO or a VP or whatever level you're at within the organization, there's more accountability now for driving profitability. And so you can't always rely on soft metrics and brand awareness alone. And so I think that really goes into how are you showing those quick wins, but still at the same time, having that brand building. And so just a few examples, I think that really I have found to be helpful are showing that momentum. So thinking about it even from like a lead qualification standpoint and how you're routing in new business, and I'll get in, you know, I can talk more about that intersection of marketing and sales. What are those behavioral signals that you're analyzing that helps the pipeline flow smoother? What is that competitive intelligence? And I think there's a lot you can do pretty easily now, looking at whether it's a co-pilot you're looking at for AI, or actually an AI agent that can help with your marketing intelligence and you can implement that and show, hey, this is efficiencies I can have, so therefore I can focus on these other deliverables to drive some big results. That's some of the shorter term strategy. I think the other piece a little bit about that bigger long-term goals is really making sure that you're curious. I have that in a post-it, actually. It says, be curious and really understanding from the individual stakeholders, meeting with other department heads, building those allies to really figure out and make sure you are in the know that you're staying aligned with the growth goals. Because you're going to have goals for marketing, but really, how is what you're doing impacting the overall growth of the company? That's really important.