TWICM 212: Canva B2B CMO on B2B Marketing, Enterprise Growth and Building Demand
That's What I Call MarketingShow Notes
Meghan Gendelman, CMO, B2B at Canva, joins That’s What I Call Marketing to discuss B2B marketing, enterprise growth, building demand and how Canva is taking a hugely successful product-led business further into the enterprise. This conversation gets into what building a B2B growth engine actually requires: understanding customers, combining product-led and sales-led growth, building brand before buyers enter the market, using data properly and working out where AI genuinely adds value.
In this episode, we cover: – Why Meghan believes B2B marketing is anything but boring, particularly when you are dealing with complex buying committees, long consideration periods and multiple decision-makers – Why customer insight still matters more than tools, including Meghan’s experience of using AI to scale content for GEO and discovering that faster content without anything new or useful simply didn’t work – How brand, customer entry points and buying signals help marketers influence customers long before they reach a website or speak to sales – Why Meghan believes every good marketer needs to become comfortable with data, pipeline and the commercial numbers behind the business – How Canva is thinking about AI, LLMs, design, brand governance and integrations with platforms including ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini – What Meghan learned from more than a decade at Salesforce, her time at DocuSign and the process that led her to become Canva’s first B2B CMO – How she leads global marketing teams through clear values, trust, vulnerability and knowing the difference between “smoke” and “fire”
We also discuss the changing B2B buying journey, why much of the decision can happen before a buyer identifies themselves, the role of brand in demand generation and why B2B and B2C marketing are becoming less distinct than marketers sometimes assume. A useful listen for marketers interested in B2B marketing, enterprise marketing, product-led growth, demand generation, brand building, AI in marketing, customer insight, sales and marketing, marketing leadership and commercial growth.
02:12 Meghan’s career across Salesforce, DocuSign and Canva 03:03 Why everything starts with the customer 05:44 The AI and GEO content experiment that failed 07:18 Why B2B marketing is not boring 10:30 Leading global marketing teams through values and trust 11:41 Smoke, fire and knowing when leaders need to get involved 12:47 Why Meghan joined Canva 14:46 Canva’s 30–40 hour B2B marketing interview challenge 16:15 Taking Canva from product-led growth into enterprise 17:04 Product-led growth versus sales-led growth 19:47 How B2B buying decisions are changing 22:08 Why every marketer needs to understand data 23:13 Meghan’s Monday morning pipeline ritual 24:21 Learning from other marketing leaders 25:00 Remote work, offices and building global teams 27:39 Why EMEA is not one market 28:40 Keeping Canva simple as the platform expands 29:11 Canva as an AI-powered design platform 30:27 Canva, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and the LLM ecosystem 31:47 Building Canva’s B2B and enterprise brand
About Meghan Gendelman B2B at Canva, leading its B2B marketing strategy as Canva continues to grow its enterprise business. Before Canva, Meghan held senior marketing roles at DocuSign and spent more than 12 years at Salesforce across areas including customer success, product marketing, growth marketing, field marketing, demand generation and regional marketing leadership.
This episode was recorded as part of the That’s What I Call Marketing Cannes Sessions and produced in partnership with The Digital Voice. The Digital Voice: https://www.thedigitalvoice.co.uk/ That’s What I Call Marketing is the podcast for marketers who care about brand, B2B, creativity, effectiveness and the future of the profession. Follow the show for more conversations with CMOs, marketing leaders, agency leaders, professors, authors, thinkers and practitioners. Find more episodes at: https://www.thatswhaticallmarketing.com That’s W
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