Heidi Bullock, CMO at Tealium, explains why demand generation without brand narrative is like a taco without the shell — and shares her playbook for making big bets that actually pay off.
Marketing isn't about finding the right channels. Most companies already have that figured out. It's digital, email, events, the usual suspects. The real question is whether you have the right message to put in those channels. Heidi Bullock, CMO at Tealium, has spent years proving that great stories are the foundation everything else builds on.
In this episode, Heidi walks through her approach to narrative development, from mining customer insights to making bold portfolio bets that can accelerate growth. She breaks down:
The Human Behind the Magic:
Heidi Bullock is an experienced marketing executive who has built a 20+ year career working at both global enterprise technology companies and start-ups. She is currently the CMO of Tealium, the trusted leader in real-time customer data orchestration. Prior to Tealium, she held leadership roles at Engagio (CMO) and Marketo (GVP, Global Marketing). Heidi was named a The SaaS Report’s Top Women Leaders in SaaS and is a frequent speaker and guest lecturer for B2B marketing. Heidi has contributed to key thought leadership guides including the Clear and Complete Guide to ABM Analytics and the Definitive Guide to Account Based Marketing, Lead Generation, Content, Mobile Marketing, and Engaging Email.
The Money Quote:
"It's very rarely that you're using the wrong channel. You're gonna find your optimized mix — it's always gonna be some digital channels, email, events. But do you have the right message that you're putting in those channels? That's the key question to ask." — Heidi
Can’t Miss Moments:
01:17 - Heidi's Journey and Role at Tealium
02:46 - The Importance of a Data-Driven Strategy
03:15 - Crafting a Compelling Brand Narrative
08:03 - Building Trust Through Customer Stories
13:18 - Embracing AI in Marketing
16:52 - Engagement and Audience Understanding
19:58 - Nurturing Creativity
Worth Your Click:
0:00:00.2 Alison Lange Engel: I'm Alison Lange Engel, CEO of Ceros, and this is The Engagement Principles, a series about how bold ideas, creative conviction, and intentional storytelling drive real results in a distracted world.
0:00:14.1 Heidi Bullock: Just remember, it's very rarely that you're using the wrong channel. It's not to me about the channels. You're going to find your optimized mix. It's always going to be some digital channels. It's going to be email. It's going to be events. But do you have the right message that you're putting in those channels? And that's a key question to ask.
0:00:32.8 Alison Lange Engel: That's Heidi Bullock, CMO at Tealium, a leading voice in B2B marketing. Today we're talking about how to stand out when it's harder than ever to break through. Heidi's take? Be bold. But boldness can be hard to measure. So how does she cut through the noise and actually connect? Let's find out.
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0:01:05.8 Alison Lange Engel: Hi, Heidi. Thank you so much for joining us.
0:01:08.2 Heidi Bullock: Of course, happy to be here, Alison.
0:01:10.8 Alison Lange Engel: I'm so excited to hear your perspective. You've had such an amazing career. We've known each other for a long time. There's also so much changing in the world of marketing and creative and company building. And so as one of the top voices in SaaS today, I'm just so excited to have you on the show.
0:01:27.0 Heidi Bullock: Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.
0:01:29.4 Alison Lange Engel: So let's set the stage. Tell us about Tealium and tell us about your journey there as the CMO building off of other incredible B2B brands that you've been a part of. What are you focused on? And what kind of change and impact are you looking to have?
0:01:45.3 Heidi Bullock: So I've been at Tealium, this year, I'll be coming upon six years. We are an intelligent data platform and we help organizations, typically large enterprise global organizations, collect data, enrich that data, and then make sure that they can activate it. So I'm sure many of your listeners have heard about the importance of a customer data strategy because it's not only critical for making sure you can deliver great experiences in marketing, but also now we're seeing a big increase of need for clean, consented data for AI projects as well. I spent a lot of time in companies that have talked about multi-channel marketing and one-to-one and being there at the exact right time. And I think what's exciting to me is we're getting a lot closer to that. We can actually deliver on that promise. And then I think, you know, you asked what has been a big change, like seeing this whole AI influx. And it's exciting. It's very powerful, but I think everybody's still scrambling to figure out what are the best steps for our organization to move it forward, so it's not just like an art project, really trying to drive business value. So I feel like it's been a very interesting time to be a CMO, that's for sure.
0:03:00.8 Alison Lange Engel: I think starting with a data-driven strategy, data-driven mindset, obviously that's a big approach to figuring out storytelling, right? The mix between how much data are you bringing to a narrative that's going to cut through and then combining that with brand and creative. Why don't you just talk us through, I'm sure in your time at Tealium and your other companies, you've refreshed narratives or you've started from scratch, how do you think about that process and what is the role that data plays in getting to that really sharp narrative?
0:03:29.6 Heidi Bullock: I have to stress that your organization will not be successful without a good story. People relate through stories. That's how you're going to stand out as a business. And I think that you see... I mean, you're very familiar with this, a lot of times people hire a CMO and they're just like, "We need somebody that's a strong demand gen leader." And to me, something I talk a lot about, I have this analogy, it's like a taco, like demand and brand, they're really... They have to go together. A taco is not a taco without a shell, you'll need both. And to me, all your demand, it will only be successful and work if you have a great story and a brand narrative. People have to understand what you stand for and what you're about, before they're ever going to download a piece of content or even do a search on your business. So I think for us, it's something... I use data to basically see, okay, what are people responding to? And it's a mix of making sure that I understand my own signals from our own customer base and perspective audience.
0:04:32.8 Heidi Bullock: We understand signal from the analyst community. And then I would also say our partner community is one that we lean on heavily. So again, just customers, our partner community, analyst community. And then I will do message testing with our SDR team to see... You know, once you can fine tune some messages, what's actually landing and resonating and then continuing to find some of that in there. But I think the hardest thing I think about recreating a narrative is... Or I mean, I'm sure you've seen it like people have it like technology names they love or a particular thing where they get so in the weeds, but that your audience and your target, your buyer and your ICP, it's not landing with them. So I think making sure you're always getting that feedback, not only on your narrative, but when things are changing, how do you continue to evolve that narrative so it's landing.
0:05:24.8 Alison Lange Engel: And it's a commitment, right? You have to be committed to the qualitative feedback, the quantitative feedback, the pressure to do it quickly, the pressure to get it in market. So, yeah, I understand that completely.
0:05:34.4 Heidi Bullock: Yeah. And one thing that I would point out to people, and I see this a lot, and we saw this actually over the last few years, a lot of folks felt like, "Oh, their pipelines decline or it's harder to hit our demanding numbers." To me, one of the first things I thought about was, do we have the right narrative? And that's one thing I'll point out for your listeners that just remember, it's very rarely that you're using the wrong channel. It's not to me about the channels, you're going to find your optimized mix. It's always going to be some digital channel. So it's going to be email. It's going to be events. But do you have the right message that you're putting in those channels? And that's a key question to ask.
0:06:08.8 Alison Lange Engel: Is the second part of that the visual identity, the expression, the show, don't tell. Like, I would love to hear more about your approach to creative and how you make room for that in everything else that you guys have going on.
0:06:21.5 Heidi Bullock: And I think a lens that I always use is your creative, your visuals should... You know, you need to think about what your brand stands for. And are you trying to educate? Are you trying to inspire? Are you trying to entertain? I think that's a good lens for people. So for visual identity and just what we put out, it always is something that we try to have a little fun. So we have a little kind of a database that we use [0:06:44.9] ____ the story is, Tealium helps you tame your data needs. So you can make sure that you have the right data that then you can use for your business. So we have kind of a fun visual identity that we've actually asked like a lot of our customers that are, you know, been with us for a while. It's like, does that land with you as well? So we check that. And then I also think something that we try to do with that is pair it with here's something that's helpful. I always have this lens of, it's like being at a cocktail party. You don't want to always be talking about yourself. You want to ask questions and be helpful. So that may seem simple, but that's really a lens that I use a lot. And then lastly, I guess it's the Heidi test. I'm like, is that something I'd look at? Is that something I'd stop on? Because sometimes with my team, I'm like, is that something you think is interesting? And if the answer is no, then I'm like, we shouldn't do it.
0:07:37.7 Alison Lange Engel: Yeah, no, it's always a great test. It can be hard, right? You can kind of feel like your team is on a treadmill, right? You're just kind of you start to get into, especially at your scale. And you do have to step back and say, is this scroll stopping? Is this interesting enough? Yeah. Would you consume it? Everyone has to kind of walk in the shoes of the customer.
0:07:53.5 Heidi Bullock: That's right. That's right. And making sure that you understand your customer's lens, because I also see where it's easy as a marketer to say, you know, I love these memes or something like that. It's really funny. But maybe if you're selling to folks that are maybe in, I don't know, payments, maybe that's not going to land with them. So what is something that they find interesting or funny or intriguing?
0:08:16.9 Alison Lange Engel: Yeah, that's so interesting. And I think core to all of this is trust, right? Building trust with your customer base, with those partners, obviously your internal team has to feel that. What are the tactics you use? Obviously, content is one. I'm thinking about your channel strategy. But does your team kind of talk about trust? How are you like really showing up as, you know, really authentic in a sea of content and so much noise?
0:08:39.6 Heidi Bullock: Kind of the lens I use is let's use a lot of customer stories to be helpful to tell our story with this. So I don't want to tell people these are the best practices. I'd much rather have... Like, as an example, we get a really good customer on LNG and they're based in Europe. They're also a Snowflake customer. We had a great testimonial and press release about two weeks ago. And I'd rather have them tell the story because they're the ones that are having success. And so I think by customers telling their story, that establishes trust. But I also think that trust is something that has to be experienced through all the customer touchpoints. So as an example, one of the first touchpoints is maybe it's something in the digital space that we're doing or even something that somebody puts on Reddit from the company. Is that something we all feel good about? And do we hold that to a high set of standards? And I would say yes, but all the way from when you're speaking to an SDR, like are the SDRs, do they have the right information? So we're providing trust and feedback. It's like... I think more organizations need to see like brand isn't a marketing thing. Brand is a company thing. And trust is, you can't afford to break it. And so you really need to have systems in place at all the stages to make sure that you're delivering on that.
0:10:00.0 Alison Lange Engel: And we'll kind of stay on this thread around like just some of the tactics around content strategy, right? How to think about formats and, you know what I mean, what's changing? What's the same? You know, how do you think about content strategy? And I think it's... I love that question because I think that we should have gone in a trend where it's almost like content's back. I think there was a period where it was...
0:10:23.7 Alison Lange Engel: Yeah, why did it go away? It was just saturation or what happened?
0:10:27.2 Heidi Bullock: I feel like it was... It was everybody got excited and it's like, okay, there's a million e-books and all the things. And I think that I've definitely seen a trend lately where it's like, "Oh, use AI, you're not going to need a content person," or... And I almost feel like it's the opposite. You need more investment here because... You know, again, like an LLM is just it's just going to find something that's already existing and you still need to make sure that you're putting new content out in the world, so your perspective and your brand and what you stand for is clear. So the way I think about our content strategy is definitely I think first think about people and the personas. And so as an example, in our business, we were in a pretty sophisticated enterprise cycle. So I don't have the luxury of just selling to one person we sell to typically somebody in the data teams, marketing, and then you might have IT or legal or even somebody now from an AI team involved. And so I think about what is it that they need at different stages of the journey and then making sure that we have compelling content that meets them where they are.
0:11:38.3 Heidi Bullock: And one thing I'd highlight is, you know, for a technical wire, we make sure do we have the right conversations happening on like subreddit, as a simple example. And then in marketing, it might be can we have a better or a strong presence on LinkedIn? That's... So just as an example, it's they're going to need different things, so that's first, and then having three real big pillars. And from that, like for us, it's really around like privacy, it's around making sure that we can create great customer experiences and then great data for AI, so everything that stems from that.
0:12:11.4 Alison Lange Engel: I love, in other podcasts and things you've written about, you talk about big bets, you know, taking some swings and being bold, being daring. And it's certainly one way to avoid the sameness that a lot of companies are starting to show up. People look the same. They sound the same. The templates are the same. Would love to hear how you approach your big bets, like taking those risks in a data driven company. It's really hard to model them out. It's hard to know the base case and the upside case. When do you decide to place those bets? How do you get that conviction right to take a big swing that's unproven?
0:12:43.6 Heidi Bullock: This is how I approach it just from and to give practical thoughts for folks. I always think of like what we do in marketing as a portfolio. And I think a good percentage of my portfolio is like, look, I have these things going for pipeline. We know that's going to work. I can measure it directionally. Of course, attribution is not perfect. But often, you know, one thing I see, Alison, is to really grow as a business. I mean, unless you're just one of these companies that has like the perfect product and everything's just... I mean, that's a small percent of companies. And it's amazing for people that work in a company because it's amazing. It's lucky. But I think it's like sometimes it is going to be the big swings and the big bets that get you to where you need to be. And really accelerate growth for the organization. And I think the thing is, is you just... You may have this idea or this concept like say as an example like we're going to do a big bet on AI. That's probably [0:13:37.3] ____ what it is for a lot of companies.
0:13:38.9 Heidi Bullock: But then building the case around it so you have the data, and it's basically an educated bet. It's not just somebody one day thinking that sounds great. It's... You know, again, like talking to analysts, partners, maybe your customer advisory board, building a case and then going to your executive team and saying, like, we are at X right now. And with with certain amount of investment, I have a hypothesis we could get to Y. And then really committing to that. And I think the key is also letting them know the time frame. And that's where I think a lot of companies... It's tough. It's like executives... It's like, "Oh, we launched that campaign. Why aren't we... Why isn't this amazing one month in?" And so I think that's the other piece, it's building the case internally and continuing to communicate. Here's some good early signals, but the full impact of this might be in a year or so. I'm sure, I mean, I always think one of my favorite examples is Target. I mean, I remember when I was in high school, it wasn't really thought of much differently than Kmart. I can remember thinking, like, everyone called it Target. And now, people really love Target. But that brand evolution was not done in a year. It took time. And so I think a lot of it is communicating timeframes to people. And your executive team, for better or for worse, they have to be bought in. It's just... Again, I knew that marketing spearheads it, but it is an executive decision.
0:15:06.3 Alison Lange Engel: And to stay committed to it, right?
0:15:07.8 Heidi Bullock: Right.
0:15:08.3 Alison Lange Engel: You can't quit in the troughs. You know, you have to kind of keep going and find the experience on the other side. And that's what we see at Ceros, the brands coming to build digital experiences with us. It can take time, right?
0:15:20.4 Heidi Bullock: That's right.
0:15:19.9 Alison Lange Engel: To figure out what that storytelling is, how to get that execution, and then tweak and optimize from there. But like you said, building brand and trust, there's that commitment. But then the payoff is enormous. But it takes that time and investment.
0:15:34.0 Heidi Bullock: It's a really good skill. And you always have to remember your internal marketing is... It is as important, if not more, sometimes than your external. Because if people aren't bought into what you're doing, it's like, oh, why is the marketing team spending money in that way or doing these things? And it's like bringing people back to, "Hey, this is our goal. Here's the early signals that we're seeing this working or where we're adjusting and continuing that conversation."
0:15:58.4 Alison Lange Engel: Yeah, absolutely. I would love to... Since you brought it up, and of course we were going to talk about it, is the fast pace and the deafening noise around AI. How are you thinking about it? How are you bringing it into your team? You can start with the company overall and go down to marketing, however you want to talk about it. But what's the current state?
0:16:17.1 Heidi Bullock: Our current state is I think that we as an executive team were very clear that this was just something that we were going to adopt and make part of our company culture. And I think our lens was AI is not going to come in and replace everybody. It's not going to take away, oh, it's like now you don't need an engineering team. I think everybody was very clear about that. But I think the way we had our lens was how can we even make the content internally more findable? So we adopted Glean pretty early. And I think that we... Even as an example, we have a Glean contest going right now. So people are creating different agents and that type of thing. And I think even within our organization and marketing, my lens has been... We have a small committee, and I've basically said, make a list of all the things that you really feel your time is spent on that maybe isn't great. Like budget is a huge one, right? Marketers can spend, especially if you become larger, so much time managing. And it's like, let's get that off our plate.
0:17:17.9 Heidi Bullock: And so let's start to think about how we can use AI for that, how we can use AI for more automated internal communications. So think about like you might have a note that goes out to your sales organization. Can we have AI help us do that so they get it in Slack and that it's not so [0:17:34.1] ____ time doing that? Things like that, it's efficiency. So it's something that I think we've taken pretty seriously and we're having, I feel really good, positive success from it. But again, I want to be clear, I don't think anyone's saying, "Oh, we don't need marketers or we don't need certain roles." It's just how can we free up those people to do what they love? And I'll tell you a side effect that I appreciate and enlighten is that no one is an AI expert. I'm not, no one is. And it's humbling and it's fun. And it's like... I feel like just that curiosity and learning is so important for people. And so that's been great. I feel like that's been a really positive thing. And it's funny because we make mistakes and we'll create something and we'll be like, oh, that didn't work quite the way we thought, so we'll keep trying. But it's not like there's somebody that is, you know, I would say better than anyone else. We're all learning.
0:18:26.3 Alison Lange Engel: Yeah, absolutely. Where do you feel like... I mean, there's so much energy around AI and thinking about product marketing differently, brand creative. Do you see the world as the best design, the best storytelling will come from that human taste, understanding the customer insight. And then AI can obviously amplify it, contest your thinking, you can think through competitive positioning. You feel like it's kind of human plus algorithm, you know?
0:18:51.6 Heidi Bullock: Yeah, I mean, I think we know that the human input, it's essential. I mean, human beings are the ones that are going to have the taste or understand subtlety. But what I love is, like you just said it, AI can help you with very rapid iteration or testing. Historically, it's like, "Oh, I need somebody product marketer." You have to get an agency. And now that you just have such more rapid feedback. So I think that part's exciting. But you still absolutely need, like, humans that are thinking about where things are going or what's exciting to folks. And I just think that that's... We're kind of in this interesting time where a lot of the things that slowed us down, they don't need to.
0:19:33.2 Alison Lange Engel: Right. And do you also think about it through the lens of when you think about kind of engagement and what's going to cut through, how do you think about engagement, right? Is that still something that at the end of the day it's like we can do all of these things, but is anyone listening? Is anyone stopping their scroll? Is anyone sharing? How do you think about that across content, about your social media presence?
0:19:53.4 Heidi Bullock: I think it's one of the hardest problems because I think... I remember being, again, at Marketo and I think a lot of the top track was like people's attention span, it's basically gone. And that was almost 10 years ago and I think it's only become worse and more tricky. And so I think it's just really understanding, again, going back to your audience, because again, we're not selling... Our product, we're not selling to, you know, like teenage girls or boys, as an example. So I always have to think about, okay, I know these people, they're in this corporate environment and what's appealing to them. And I think the thing that we see work really well is just providing concise, helpful content and then a mix of that with very targeted, like field events where... I almost think that they can get a sense of who we are at Tealium and trust, they can see like... These are people that we like and can trust. So for us, it's that combination. But I think every company has to figure out that secret sauce. But I think where you can get into trouble is thinking that like, there's a... Like, you can copy paste. It's like, oh, here's the company that I love that did this, that's going to work for us. And it may not, it just depends on your audience. And so I really try to spend time thinking about what do these people, what do they find exciting? What do they love? Like, and how can we deliver that in a way that just seems like really, really interesting. And like I said, I think a good lens is you can educate, you can entertain, or you can inspire. And like, for your brand, what does your buyer relate to?
0:21:24.3 Alison Lange Engel: I've always... When I've worked with amazing CEOs, they did such a good job at LinkedIn and at Stripe and other companies to be aware, like appropriately paranoid about what's going on in the market and the market share and the buyer shifts, but then really owning your own differentiation, what makes you unique from top to bottom, brand, data, product, what's defensible, a partner ecosystem. Every company has these spikes. And I think, yeah, you lose your edge if you start to neutralize all those spikes or make them too similar to someone else. Like you have to lean into the spikes that you feel like are differentiated and that are enduring too. Like what's going to last? What's going to be your end? You've been there six years, the company probably feels very different than it did six years ago, right? So you have to think about what's enduring too.
0:22:07.1 Heidi Bullock: That's right. I mean, it feels like actually a complete... I feel like I've had three different jobs, you know, just with the different times. So I agree with you. And I think that it's just very important, you're right, is to always be paranoid too and just stay as close as you can to the buyer. Because again, I do think we are in a very... You know, it's a fickle environment. And I think, you know, what somebody falls in love with, like even six months ago in technology can change rapidly. So staying very close to that.
0:22:33.1 Alison Lange Engel: Yeah, absolutely. This was great, Heidi. Thank you. I have one last question that I ask everyone who joins the show. How do you nurture creativity in your own life?
0:22:42.3 Heidi Bullock: I think it's so important. And I think... I will first say like, if you don't do it, I don't know how you can bring that to a job. And so I think the ways I nurture creativity... I actually, I love painting. And I can spend a lot of time when I get the time doing that. I also feel like I spend a lot of time... Actually, I'm a big hiker as well. And it just lets my mind kind of think through things that I process during the day. And that's almost when I come up with my best ideas.
0:23:13.5 Alison Lange Engel: Right. I would say not behind your desk, not into a Zoom screen.
0:23:17.3 Heidi Bullock: Not behind a desk, no, I'd like to hike and like listen to podcasts and just, yeah, it gives me time to reflect and I see come up with things that then I can bring to work.
0:23:27.5 Alison Lange Engel: Yeah, I love that. Thank you. We all can draw inspiration from that. So good to see you, Heidi. Thanks so much.
0:23:33.4 Heidi Bullock: Of course. Thanks for having me.
0:23:34.0 Alison Lange Engel: Best of luck for everything. Thanks.
0:23:35.2 Heidi Bullock: Thanks.
0:23:35.8 Alison Lange Engel: Thanks for tuning in. We'll be back soon with bold thinkers and creative leaders reshaping what it means to truly engage in today's landscape. If this resonated with you, subscribe and follow the show. We're just getting started. This is the Engagement Principles. Thanks for listening.
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