In the ever-evolving world of B2B marketing, the path to becoming a Chief Marketing Officer is rarely a straight line. We sat down with Cari Jaquet, a multiple-time CMO, on our podcast, Tomorrow’s Best Practices, Today.

Cari’s career path offers invaluable lessons for anyone navigating the marketing landscape—from early-stage founders to seasoned agency professionals.

Cari Jaquet’s journey is a masterclass in strategic career growth, and it’s a story we can all learn from. With a resume that includes key marketing leadership roles at CoreView, BigPanda, and her current position at Marketing Bonobo, Cari has seen it all.

She’s been at the helm of a company’s marketing engine during a pivotal growth phase, transforming a Series B company with a $200 million valuation into a category leader valued at $1.2 billion in just two years.

So, what does it take to get there? According to Cari, the first step is knowing yourself and finding your “bug”.

For her, it was demand generation. Early in her career, while writing copy for Sears, she saw the direct impact of her work on sales reports—clearing out detergent from a store in Visalia and vacuum cleaners in Sacramento.

This experience solidified her desire to be “part of that engine that drove bottom-line results”. This passion for connecting marketing directly to sales outcomes has been the one consistent theme throughout her career.

Navigating the Stages of Company Growth

Cari breaks down the different stages of a company and the unique challenges and opportunities for a marketing leader at each:

  • Pre-Series A/Series A: This is the “roll up your sleeves” phase. As a marketing leader, you’re not just strategizing; you’re executing every detail, from setting up event booths to ordering office supplies. The hands-on work means every contribution has a significant impact.
  • Series B: At this stage, the business model is repeatable, and the focus shifts to ensuring you don’t lose sight of your target audience. You have more resources to experiment with sophisticated digital campaigns and better collateral.
  • Series C and Beyond: As companies scale, the complexity multiplies. With multiple sales teams, channels, and regions, the focus is on localization and creating a “factory” that reliably delivers what the business needs. Marketing leaders must manage a portfolio of products and regions, deal with brand consolidation, and become more sophisticated in their approach to pricing and packaging.

Cari’s advice for B2B marketers is to understand these different stages. The skills and mindset required to thrive at a 10-person company are different from those needed at a 300-person organization. Recognizing this helps marketers choose the right environment for their own personal and professional growth.

The BigPanda Story: A Case Study in Opportunistic Marketing

Cari’s time at BigPanda is a great example of what can happen when a marketing team is agile, opportunistic, and backed by a supportive executive team.

Joining just two months before the pandemic hit, Cari and her small team of two (who were initially event marketers) had to completely pivot their strategy.

Instead of panicking, they leaned into the market changes. The pandemic created a massive opportunity for a SaaS-based IT operations company like BigPanda, especially as their on-premise competitors struggled.

The team leveraged the shift to remote work by fostering a sense of community, creating a Slack channel for IT ops professionals to connect and share. They listened to the community’s conversations, which then informed their webinar topics.

Crucially, the BigPanda board and executives never pulled back on the marketing budget. They asked the team to reallocate their event dollars to keep momentum going.

This allowed Cari’s team to experiment with creative, high-touch virtual events, like cocktail tastings where they shipped whiskey to attendees’ homes, to foster community engagement. This focus on human connection was a huge success.

The BigPanda marketing team, which started with just two people, grew to 11 people. Cari built this team with a clear strategy, adding roles such as:

  • Customer Marketing: To build advocacy and a reference program.
  • Campaign Experts: To create reusable “campaigns in a box” for channel partners and the digital team.
  • Partnership Marketing: To leverage co-branded campaigns with strategic partners like AWS and DataDog.
  • Field Marketing: To execute high-touch, one-to-few campaigns and provide deal acceleration.

Building this marketing team, combined with a willingness to experiment with creative tactics like Cameo videos and personalized direct mail, powered 85% of BigPanda’s pipeline and contributed significantly to its unicorn valuation.

The Future of Marketing: AI and The Human Element

Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, Cari sees AI not as a threat, but as a partner. She uses AI as a brainstorming tool and outline builder, believing it makes her output “smarter” and “more efficient”. For B2B marketers worried about being made obsolete, she offers a simple truth: “AI will only obsolete you if you let it”.

The key is to maintain the human element. While AI can create content, it’s the human touch—the personalization and unique insight—that truly breaks through the noise.

As she notes, we need to have empathy for our customers, who may also be grappling with the implications of AI, and remember that the value we deliver is what truly matters, not the technology that powers it.

Final Thoughts for B2B marketers

Cari’s journey underscores several key takeaways for B2B marketers:

  • Specialize by Stage: Understand the distinct needs of companies at different growth stages, from the hands-on Series A to the complex, multi-channel Series C.
  • Focus on Business Impact: Like Cari, tie your work directly to bottom-line results. Speak the language of demand generation and pipeline to build trust with marketing leaders.
  • Be Opportunistic and Agile: The BigPanda story is a perfect example of how to turn a market disruption into a competitive advantage. Identify and capitalize on these moments.
  • Embrace AI, but cherish the human touch: Use AI as a tool to enhance your work, but never lose sight of the personalized, creative campaigns that build real connections with customers.

To cap off our conversation, Cari left us with a simple, piece of advice for marketers: “Stop, start, continue.”

Regularly evaluate what’s working, what isn’t, and be willing to cut a campaign that isn’t delivering, no matter how much time and money you’ve invested in it. This mindset of constant evaluation and a focus on results is what separates great B2B marketers from the rest.

Watch the full-video episode to gain even more insights. 

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