#116: Career | Do you really want to be CMO? Returning from Parental Leave, What's working in B2B marketing today (with Amanda Natividad)

Amanda Natividad is VP of Marketing at SparkToro. She's also a contributor for Adweek, a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef, and a former journalist. Dave and Amanda catch up after Amanda's return to work after having her second child, talk about trends they are seeing in B2B marketing today and what Amanda's seen work at SparkToro (including email strategy and LinkedIn). Plus they talk about the path to CMO - and why Amanda enjoys being a team of one.00:00 - Webinar Promotion Without Links and Returning to Work After Maternity Leave.06:04 - The Emotional Impact of Parental Leave.08:40 - Navigating Career Paths in Marketing.12:10 - SparkToro's Audience Research Tool and Growth Strategy.14:31 - VP of Marketing at SparkToro: Managing Top-of-Funnel, Organics, and Events.19:11 - Rethinking the pursuit of status in business.22:10 - Contemplating financial gains and their true value.23:10 - Prioritizing time over extra income for happiness.29:26 -Transitioning from Consulting to Content Business: The Evolution of Exit Five.32:01 - The challenges and potential rewards of solopreneurship.34:16 - Navigating Hiring and Trust in a Small Team38:05 - Strategic Email Marketing at Sparktoro: Balancing Frequency and Impact.41:06 - Sparktoro's Email Strategy: Quality over Quantity and List Management Tactics.43:08 - The challenge of balancing marketing strategies.48:25 - Optimizing LinkedIn Strategy: Pinning Comments and Zero-Click Content.50:32 - Embedding Webinar Links in Blog Posts for Engagement52:53 - Closing Thoughts. Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletterLearn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/***Brought to you by:Optimizely - the AI platform for marketers. Build your own AI agents or pull from a directory of 50+ pre-built ones for marketing use cases. Their new Virtual Teammates can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive.Webflow - A website platform built for the agentic web, letting modern marketing teams build fully custom sites that perform in AI search with no developer needed. Learn more at webflow.com/for/exitfive.Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.Compound Growth Marketing - A full-funnel demand gen agency helping high-growth cybersecurity and enterprise software companies show up earlier in the buying journey, combining AEO, modern paid advertising, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Podcast listeners get two free media planning sessions to find out what channels are driving the best ROI. Learn more at compoundgrowthmarketing.com/exitfive. ***Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.Visit hatch.fm to learn more